The usual practice in photography is to crop pictures to highlight what is in the Photographer's optic. I followed that cropping process to the serial phots of this Kingfisher in our garden, who was perched about 150 meters away. That was the nearest distance I could reach for taking the pictures of the kingfisher.
Three changes occurred as I kept cropping the photos to get a micro view. First the larger view around the bird got obliterated. Second the visibility of the bird improved. Third the last two photographs appeared noisy. The feathers were not looking crisp and sharp.
The advantages and disadvantages of the art of cropping photographs!
This gave me an insight about the way we process every information we receive. Our mind through its optic of pre-existing ideas, thoughts, or bias filters the information and decodes it to fit into our existing opinion or a new opinion we are conditioned by our overview on that issue. This has its advantages and disadvantage. It is good to use our knowledge to process an information and interpret it ethically and discerningly. The disadvantage, is that most information we process in this fashion looses its objectivity and factuality it deserves when we interpret it subjectively.
How to then, have a macro and micro view of information we receive so that we look for an all rounded view of facts and information !
The political climate in India is now charged with the election pitch of campaigning for electing a national government for the next five years. What I encounter in the political narrative is accusation and counter accusation. We disregard human worth and highlight human vulnerability and acts of commission and omission.
One thing that the Kingfisher maintained in the macro and micro views of the photos is its colourfulness and elegance. That did not change.
I wish we learn to view and receive others as they are rather than distort them and their behaviour through the optic we introduce through our personal preferred narration.
One can use any brand of car to travel form one place to another to reach the destination. Each car has its strengths and weaknesses. But each carries the passengers.
It is the political ideology or the means we advocate to reach our destination that really matters.
The way we are and behave is determined by our inner beliefs and orientation. One political party in India has brought a strong sense of coherence by bringing religious sentiments to the political narrative. Another political party attempts to retain a secular and social outlook to its ideology.
Both political parties need to get the picture of the reality. The reality is that there is increasing unemployment, disparity between the rich and poor, and alienation of the base of pyramid of the population from moving upward socially and economically. One rich family can spend millions of rupees for a pre marriage function, where as there are millions of farmers and artisans trapped in debt and distress. When we live in such a polarised social climate, what we need is to return to ask a fundamental question: who is our focus!
The kingfisher and all around it brings the fullness to our view. I got an enlarged view of the Kingfisher but a reduced view of all that was around it, during the cropping process. The pre-cropped and cropped view together bring wholeness.
The tree and the forest are equally important! One cannot miss the tree for the wood or vice versa.
Towards an integrated view, orientation and living- to me that comes as a calling for a family, society, nation and organisations!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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