More About Local Wonder

An earlier post presented the idea of “Local Wonder” as a starting point for a sort of vision for my photography. In that case, the focus was on looking closely at things to see their wonderful aspects. In addition to giving a focus for some photography, the hope is that it could also teach me to be more aware in general.

There is another aspect to being more aware that, ironically, didn’t occur to me at first, but was the first focus for my 360 photography – that it is also important to look around.

This other aspect is that at any given moment in time and space we tend to focus on whatever seems most obviously interesting. That may be something in the environment, in which case it is generally outstanding in some way. More and more, it may mean focusing on the little square of glowing glass held in our hand.

When we focus like that, it is easy to miss other interesting things that are all around us. Thus, a 360 photo (aka VR photo), that allows one to look around can remind us to pay attention to everything, rather than just the main thing.

Waterfalls can be a good example of this. When visiting a waterfall, we are often captivated by the fall itself. That’s reasonable, as it’s generally the reason we made the trip to that spot in the first place and it’s probably the most important thing there. But waterfalls are often in beautiful environments that, if the fall itself were not there, might still be full of enjoyable scenes. Lush canyons, striking rock formations, relaxing streams, are all things we might encounter that we would normally find interesting. However, they may be ignored when the waterfall is the focus.

By taking VR photos of waterfalls, we can be reminded that there is more to see there.

This suggests a second aspect to Local Wonder, which is the idea that we need to look around in addition to looking closer.

Said another way, learning to see has two aspects – looking around and looking closer. These two deliberate actions can be expressed in the two different forms of photography – 360 photography and close-up photography.

These ideas are still a work in progress, but this does seem like a promising way to think about the overall work of Whole Reality photography.