Perspective

13 Apr Perspective

I think a lot about perspective. Where you stand, where you live, where the light hits, your mood; all of these affect how you view the world in a particular moment.

A couple of weeks ago my family went to Dallas for Spring Break, just as spring was breaking in Chapel Hill where we live. The day before we left I shot the above image of a tree with white blooms in the meadow behind our house. The next day as we were flying to Dallas I was snapping images out of the plane when I spotted a golf course and realized it was near our house. Thirty seconds later I saw the meadow, and spotted the white tree. It’s just north and left of center next to a black spot- the pond in the meadow.

I love to shoot out of planes and I also like to grab images out of cars. One of my favorite things to do is shoot bridges and overpasses. I grabbed the shot of the bridge overpass on the way to the airport heading out of Dallas. An hour later, I shot from the plane and realized I was grabbing the same overpass. Things can seem so simple from above. From this perspective the overpass almost seems like a drawing, like a child could snap it together. From the ground, the swirling bridges feel so massive, and impossibly difficult to fathom building.

I love to shoot in the Spring and the Fall because the change of season creates new situations every day. I’m particularly drawn to the way the light blasts through the baby leaves. I shoot in color and then process the images with color filters in black and white, which can darken the sky and brighten the leaves. We were near an airport with planes passing over every minute, so it was easy to grab this one with both leaves and a plane.

Shooting the plants in the meadow, learning to get low, and to focus on things I might normally miss, has been a part of my work on “All The Rage”. Making these images was kind of a meditation practice and a way to force myself to slow down a bit. It took me a little while to find that the spiders hid below their little bowl shaped webs. I had to really get low to see them. Over the past year Suki, David, and I have all begun to really focus on this idea of slowing down and stepping outside our usual ways of thinking and doing things, because it seems so central to the film we are working on. It’s one thing to think of perspective in terms of images. It’s another to step outside of ourselves and see how our own perspective on our lives affects us in deep, and unconscious ways.

I have been traveling a lot recently, as well as dealing with a lot of different pressures, and my foot tightness/pain has flared up. It always frustrates me when this happens, especially when I feel somewhat powerless to stop the process. I spend a lot of time trying to both figure out what it is that’s bothering me, and simultaneously trying not to let it become too much of my focus. It’s been up and down, and the foot pain has been a nuisance, but it hasn’t kept me from doing what I need to do. A couple of days ago, I started to get a cold. When it really kicked in, the pain subsided. Dr. Sarno talks about this a lot, that when someone gets sick, or hurt, their other symptoms might fall away, because they aren’t needed any more to distract us from the unthinkable thoughts. He calls it the “symptom imperative” – you just need a symptom, doesn’t matter which one, to distract the brain.

Sometimes I find that good news will bring on the pain, because it can also trigger unconscious frustration. We have had a pretty difficult ride with our recent film “Who Took Johnny”. When we get it in front of people, they love it. The trick is getting it in front of people because in order to do that we have to get it past programmers. It took nearly a year and a half before a festival in Europe would show it, and when they did, the response was amazing. It was awesome to see how powerfully it connected with people, but also frustrating to deal with the fact that it took so long to get it past the gatekeepers.

We are thrilled that people are interested in “All The Rage”. It is also extremely stressful because there is so much pressure to make sure it’s done right. I try to be aware of, and balance out these different perspectives, but it can still create some pain. I’ve learned a lot over the past couple years. While I may not have completely “beat” my own stress/pain issues, I keep moving forward, and I try to keep that truth in perspective, especially when things flare up.