I stopped by the Kennebunk Plains yesterday on the off chance that the Wood Lilies were in bloom. They weren’t. These tiny little complex purplish flowers on tall stems were in bloom. (I think it might be Blue Toadflax.) I have tried to photograph them every year for several years now. They are incredibly hard to get in focus. I have been using super-zoom Point & Shoot cameras, where manual focus is difficult to use (at best), and these flowers are just too small for the auto focus to lock on to, even with the best P&S macro modes. I have many pictures of fuzzy purple blobs in front of sharply focused grass. 🙂

This year I am shooting these kinds of subjects with Sony NEX cameras (Alpha E mount, Compact Mirrorless System Cameras). ZEISS Camera Lens division lent me a full set of the Touit E mount lenses for The ZEISS VICTORY SF Experience Event in Europe, and I have been particularly enjoying the 12mm f2.8 (18mm equivalent) and the 50mm f2.8 Macro (75mm equivalent macro). Both are wonderful and share the ability to produce the sharp, clear, vivid images that ZEISS lenses are famous for. They have very different perspectives though.

I have used the 12mm Touit mostly, as you might expect, for landscapes, but I have also enjoyed using it inside, for casual shots of people doing stuff. However, shots like the top panel above might just be my favorite use of the extra-wide lens. With the 12mm you can move in very close, within inches, of foreground objects, and still maintain relatively sharp background focus. I find this unique perspective to be particularly effective with wildflowers. If I get down low, using the flip-up LCD on the Sony, I can frame the wildflowers in their environment. With an interesting sky for backdrop, this can produce some very interesting shots.

I have two NEX bodies, so I can carry both the 12mm and the 50mm mounted and ready to go. Switching to the 50mm macro for these same wildflowers produces very different images.  Focus is still a challenge, by the way, even for the CMLSCs. I had to get down low enough to frame the flowers against the sky before the NEX could find focus…but then, once found, I was able to reframe against the grass. Again, it is a matter of perspective. Flowers against the sky produces a very different effect than those same flowers framed against the out-of-focus grasses.

These three panels, then, demonstrate the differences in perspective that are possible with the two different lenses. Each of the images is, I think, successful in its own right, while each is very different from the others.

And for the Sunday Thought. Well, yes, often in the spirit, it is also all about perspective. I find peace (which I take to be the experience of being centered in the spirit, focused, moving effortlessly with the flow of loving intention in every moment toward a future full of promise) to be particularly sensitive to changes in perspective. The fact is, from the right perspective, I am just about always at peace, since it is actually quite difficult (perhaps even impossible) for anyone who lives by faith to get far out of the flow of loving intention. When I experience anxiety or confusion, un-peace, it is generally because I am looking at my situation from the wrong point of view, the wrong perspective. It is not the situation that needs to change. It is a little like the the 50mm macro and auto-focus. To bring everything into sharp focus, I just need to find another point of view…and then, once I have achieved that first clarity, everything else becomes clear, and whatever restrictions and frustrations I was experiencing simply no longer apply. Or sometimes it is like the 12mm wide-angle lens. Sometimes I am so focused on the particular in the situation that I fail to find focus. Taking the wider view, putting the particular back into its larger landscape, is all that I need to do to find peace. The particular does not change. Only my perspective.

In the spirit, it is not, of course, different lenses that do the trick. In the spirit it is simply the eyes of faith. It is trust in the loving intention of a creator God who is the very definition of good, and whose love insures my (and your) future of promise. We just have to switch to the eyes of faith to find the right perspective…and then all is peace. Happy Sunday!