As someone who is extremely passionate about photography, I find myself thinking about it constantly-- during meetings at work, while on my morning run, in the shower, on the pot-- well, you get the point. I'm always sizing up the world through the imaginary camera in my head, looking for interesting colors, lines, spacial relationships, and imagining how I might best capture those things in photographs. Not everything in our 3-d world translates well onto a 2-d medium, so it often takes lots of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking to effectively capture the true essence of certain things in photos.
On a deeper level, however, I find it fascinating that when we press the shutter of a camera to take a portrait (or a landscape shot, or anything else that one might take a picture of), we're not actually capturing the person or object(s) that we see through the viewfinder. The reality is, we're capturing the
light that's being reflected from that person or object. If you can imagine an actor standing on a large stage with a single spotlight on him and you were to take a picture, your photo would consist of whatever light was being reflected back toward the camera in that moment. If the actor were to take a few steps back so that he was in a totally dark portion of the stage, then you wouldn't see him at all in the resulting photo, because he wouldn't be reflecting any light back toward you. He's still there, of course, but the camera simply doesn't "see" him.
So the point I'm trying to make here is that, from the camera's perspective, if your subject isn't being illuminated by some light source, then all that can be seen is total darkness. And here's the kicker........it occurred to me the other day while I was on my morning jog (which, incidentally is where I do the majority of my "deep" thinking) that this relationship is profoundly similar to that of humanity and God. Now, bear with me here....and strap on your thinking caps, 'cause we're goin' in.
The idea is this: when it comes to "us" and "God", if we aren't being illuminated by some light source (I personally believe this to be Jesus), then we're pretty much in total darkness from His perspective. In other words, without Christ, you and I would never show up as glowing blips on God's radar screen. On the other hand, if you
are a believer, then all God sees when He looks at you is the beautiful and perfect light of His Son being reflected back.
Maybe this is somewhat of a strained analogy, or maybe there's a little nugget of truth to be found somewhere in all of this. Or maybe you think I've just gone completely bananas comparing the photographic process to man's cosmic juxtaposition with God!
;-) But either way, no matter which side of the fence you fall on, I'd love to hear your thoughts below.
Well, take care, everyone, and have a very happy and blessed New Year!
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