Happy Sunday! I spent an hour yesterday morning at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge headquarters area, walking the little nature trail through the woods down to the Little River and the Merriland, as the sun was trying to warm a cold early spring day. There is little sign of spring at Rachel Carson beyond the light, the first hard leaf buds, and the earliest signs the intention to blossom on the Hobblebush. 

This is where the Merriland River, in the foreground, meets the Little River, on the left. It is a 4 shot panorama and really needs to be seen as large as your monitor will allow. It is, in fact, considerably wider than you would be likely to take in at one view. By relaxing your attention and, so to speak, stepping back behind your eyes, you would be able to see this sweep, but generally our attention is more focused and we would only see this as a series of impressions. I like the way the early light is playing across the marsh and bringing up the blues in the water, when there are none in the sky.

Canon SX20IS, four 28mm equivalent fields of view, stitched using the Panorama tool in Photomerge within PhotoShop Elements 9, and processed for intensity and clarity in Lightroom. Average exposure was in the f4 @ 1/160th @ ISO 80 range. Landscape mode.

And,for Sunday…I think about that focused attention we bring to bear on the world around us, limiting our natural 180º plus, to between 15º of truly focused attention, and 60º-90º of operational attention. We call the rest peripheral. And yet, we could all benefit, I suspect, from the habit, say, once or twice a day, of stepping back behind our eyes, relaxing, and taking in the full width of our vision. It is certainly so in spiritual things. One of the most profound insights of any spiritual journey is just how focused on our limited view of things we all are, and what a change it makes to step back and look out of larger eyes than our own. Doing so does not diminish in any way the particular that is the focus of our attention…it just puts it in perspective. What is my own salvation, precious as it is, in comparison to the salvation of mankind and the redemption of creation? There is a kind of prayer that seeks that experience…not petition (necessary focused on the particular)…but a reverent approach to unity through love that is sometimes called meditation. Unfocused attention, while I would not argue that it is the highest form of vision, or of prayer, is undoubtedly good for us.

Which is maybe why every photographer needs to experiment with panoramas once in a while. 🙂