Maui Vacation Photography Tips - Ordinary as Extraordinary

Things to think about while taking pictures during your Maui vacation! A Maui vacation is the perfect time to take time to reflect on the ordinary things in life and how extraordinary they really are!

Seeing The Ordinary
As Extraordinary

Techniques for unlocking your creative potential.
by
Dewitt Jones

An Extract - See Full Article Here

Let me share three of these techniques with you, using my photographs as examples. To find an extraordinary photograph, I need the right lens on my camera. In other words, if I don't view the challenge from the right perspective, I won't have a chance of finding a creative solution. Consider the photograph of Yosemite Falls . It's seen from an angle, a perspective that offers quite a pleasant scene. An amateur photographer would probably be quite pleased with it. But as I stared through the camera, I realized I had chosen the wrong lens. The perspective was O.K., but I'd seen it before. It offered nothing new, nothing extraordinary.

I looked again, and as I began to fall in love with the view before me, I realized that what really drew my eye was not this view at all. Rather, it was just the juxtaposition of the silhouetted tree at the bottom of the frame and the surging water behind. The wrong lens -- the wrong perspective -- kept me from capturing the extraordinary view. When I corrected my perspective, I found the real photograph! It's easy for me to change a photographic lens. It's often much harder to make sure I've got the right perspective on a business challenge.

Yet, the metaphor from photography helps me daily. As an association executive, I might ask, "Do I have the best lens through which to see the vision of my association? Have I found the right angle for explaining why two associations should merge? Do I have the right perspective for helping to build strong staff/board partnerships?" We have to find the right lens; we also have to find the right focus.

What are the elements of the solution that deserve the most attention? Within that right perspective, what are the elements that are most critical? In the photograph of the falls, everything has to be in focus. Both the tree and the falls must be sharp, or you'll never see the magic of the vision. In the case of this photograph only one element needs to be clear. Only the little ground squirrel needs to be sharp while the soft background serves as a foil to draw attention to the squirrel. Here again, the photographic metaphor can be helpful in facing the challenges in association work. "Have I found the best focus for my association's strategic plan? Have I clearly focused and prioritized the programs and services that the association offers?" The right perspective, the right focus, they're important. I found the real key to creativity, however, in another lesson from my photography: There's more than one right answer.

It's a simple idea but one which can radically change the way you run your association and your life. Throughout our careers, we too often fall prey to the belief that there's only one right answer. You either have it or you don't. Though my own thinking often pulls me in this direction, I find it simply doesn't match up with the world I see around me. As a photojournalist, I've reported on a thousand different cultures finding a thousand different answers to the challenges they face day-to-day. As a photographer, I've shot hundreds of excellent photographs of the same subject. Our world just happens to be ambiguous, and that can be terrifying or, if seen from the right perspective, can be the very thing that leads us to open to our creativity.

National Geographic sent me to Smith River , California where they raise about eighty per cent of the country's Easter lilies. In Photograph #4, I've chosen a perspective that does a pretty good job of telling that story: picked lilies, unpicked lilies, the boy picking them, a little of the region's architecture and weather. It's one right answer. As a photographer, however, I would never think of stopping here. Almost as soon as I snapped the shutter, I reached into my bag for another lens, walked over two rows, knelt down and found... another right answer. Here were the same parameters of the problem now seen from a totally different point of view. My favorite right answer that afternoon was Photograph #6. They were using a helicopter in the field, I got a ride and, looking down from 200 feet, saw the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Three right answers. It's so easy for me to think this way in my photography and yet often so hard for me to adapt it to other areas of my life. When I do, however, the results are remarkable. When we really believe that there's more than one right answer so much begins to change. First, we don't stop at first right answer. The first right answer is just doing our job. Any of us can come up with one right answer. But, and here's the key, as we look for the next answer, we do so, not in terror, but comfortably knowing that it will be there waiting for us.


Now go out and look at something you found quite ordinary and find the extraordinary by changing your perspective.


Safe Travels


Margit