It’s amazing what a difference it makes how you see a scene depending on how you approach it. These two pictures of an Orb Spider were taken in Waterfall Gorge, Mt Greville at the same time and from the same position.

The first one was taken with just the ambient light and a shutter speed of 1/5sec which allows the whole scene to be taken in and you can see the background and context.

Because of a slight breeze coming up the gorge the web was moving and made it difficult to get the image nice and sharp. So I changed by tactic and used a flash to light the spider. Now the flash means I can use a faster shutter speed and freeze and movement but it’s not powerful enough to light the background and so it turns out black.

I wonder how often our view of the world is coloured by the way we approach it? Do we slow down long enough to understand the whole scene and context? Or do we just look for what is right in front of us?

Slow down, look around and you might see things you haven’t seen before, solutions you haven’t considered or beauty you haven’t appreciated.