Finch Fiesta

The interesting thing about tiny things is that when you look at them up close or in isolation, it's difficult to know what size they are. They need  familiar objects with them to give them scale.

Macro shots, on the other hand, are often impossible to recognize without the whole of which they are a part. Sometimes they become something completely separate in the eye of the beholder…an abstract or an intricate design.

Part of photography, the creative part, I feel, is choosing which part of a scene you want to isolate or if you want to show the show the whole thing. The human eye can take in a lot more than the camera, and it can also edit out things like telephone wires, but it can't see the details the eye of the camera can capture in a macro shot.

It's all about context.

I had to decide between a long shot of the frenzied activity of the small house finches and the tinier goldfinches at the feeder today in hopes of capturing their numbers  or the order in the chaos revealed by a closer shot. Since many of them were indistinguishable from fluttering leaves,  or mere blurs, I chose the orderly group evenly spaced on the perches of the tall feeder. Your mind will have to supply the activity involved in changing the order and even the individuals on each perch approximately every two seconds.

Which leads me to wonder how much our mind fills in the spaces and edits the things we see. And perhaps how much is supplied by our other senses.. I'm sure artists and neurologists must study this all the time….