Forest for the Trees
New (old) fine art photography
I’ve had a tendency to hold back some of my best images because of recognizable faces. For most of my work, particularly when working with private clients, this is the right instinct. I have also noticed that some of the best images feature people. It makes sense, we are human, after all. We are social beings, we like to see and interact with others. Including a face in a photo also adds a certain level of authenticity. It places the viewer in the scene in a way a landscape devoid of people cannot. A person adds life. This is true of other art forms, too, especially in movies and in the more modern world of social media. It is true in everyday life when we feel the impact of someone else’s victory, defeat, or tragedy. We feel these connections between one another as people, because we are people.
Yes, we all could use some solitude from time to time, and there are some of us who prefer it. But even in that solitude, we aren’t just avoiding people, we’re avoiding what we think about people, our perception of the world. As any explorer will tell you; you can’t outrun your own mind. Still, we go to the wild to reset, we go to the wild for adventure, and we go to the wild to feel small. It’s this feeling of being small that interests me now, it’s that feeling that made pull this particular image out of my portfolio and add it to my fine art catalog.
In the image are two people. There is the subject, a mountain hunter, and me, the photographer. Most people don’t think about the photographer. That’s ok, I don’t normally want you to. I’ve even stopped signing the front of my images so you don’t get distracted by a name or personal brand. But in this case, I do want you to think about it. The wild offers these wonderful moments that we can all understand on our own, yet they are most often more impactful when they are shared with others. Even with a photographer who you can’t see. There is a certain energy, a remembering, between people who share experiences in the wild. It is a particular type of bond to stand with others and experience something greater than ourselves. This experience calls us back, the bond helps us to pursue it more each outing.
This feeling of being small, of standing before a mountain, of peering through fog at trees that whisk the clouds, is a human universal. There may be some who don’t like it and do all they can to avoid it, but there are none who are numb to it. Even those of us living a modern life still gape at a sky full of stars, still travel to see the continent’s great landscapes, and enjoy a favorite tree in a local park. All of this is to say, or rather, to ask, why do we feel this way? Why do we spend all our lives trying to get bigger in our careers and communities but we feel the most at peace when we are the smallest, when we’re draped in a mountain range feeding on alpine air?
I suspect an evolutionary biologist has an answer for why the combination of beauty and scale strikes us, or is so impactful for us, but I think they’re just looking at the trees, and forgetting the people, forgetting the forest. When we experience this moment of smallness, of what we might call awe, it is not simply because of the amount of atoms and cells and rock and ecological material surrounding us. It’s no psychological trick or coping mechanism, though it may function as such. It is because we feel a certain lack, we notice that there is a space between us and that which is greater than us. This is no bold claim. This lack appears any time we compare ourselves to something we don’t have, to the person we want to be. But somehow, in nature, we can experience the good side of this lack instead of using it to drum up past or future thoughts about our earthly failures. Awe in nature is happening now. Awe in nature needs no comparison because we all know we cannot become a tree, or a mountain, or a glacier. In nature, we can just enjoy the experience.
There are some people who get these feelings in everyday life, who can carry this state of being around with them no matter the location, no matter if it is the cave of an aesthetic or the office of a CEO. These are godly people, these are the people who give us the feeling of a great mountain range, or of an endless sea. These are the people who expose our own lack in a way that is not detrimental, but loving and constructive. They also show us what is possible, they show us things that we cannot see. We call them gurus and saints, enlightened and discerning. We experience them like we experience a moment of awe in nature.
That we can experience awe in nature, and in people, is a bit of a giveaway. It means that part of that awe, part of that experience, is in each of us. It means we’re connected, or rather, animated, by the same forces. It means any one of us can step back from our stresses and sorrows, our boredoms and monotony, and in our own human way, find an experience of smallness in any situation.
This isn’t an easy task, it is more challenging than many of the mountains we visit. Our view is a small one, our perception is narrowed by our five limited senses. As much as we like to be the hero of our own story, as much as we love our attention and success and accolades, it’s the feeling of being small that calls to us the most. It’s the feeling of being small that binds us together in the remote places of the world or in front of the meekest of men and women. It is the feeling of confronting that which is not only bigger than us, but beyond us. There are more things in the photograph of our reality than us and nature, there is a cosmic photographer taking photos, standing with us just outside of the frame.
Most of you know the feeling I write about, all of you seek it out. Maybe it’s God, maybe it’s Nature. Maybe it’s what happens when we shrink ourselves, step outside of our own photograph, and for just a moment, see the Forest for the Trees.