When I was small and Christmas trees were tall, we used to love while others used to play.  Don’t ask me why the time has passed us by. Someone else moved in from far away. Now we are tall and Christmas trees are small and you don’t ask the time of day.  But you and I, our love will never die.  But guess we’ll cry, come first of May. ………………………. First of May.. Bee Gees

Remember when you were little.. Everyone seemed so tall.  Buildings looked so big.  The world around you was gigantic in comparison to your little self.  But when you looked at things in the distance they seemed so small so you assumed that because they looked little, they were little.  It was all a matter of perspective and it takes a long time for a child to understand that.  I guess that’s why they still believe they are invincible.. After all they can hold the moon in their hands if they reach out far enough.

When I was very young, we lived in a suburb of Geelong in Victoria, Australia called Norlane.. From Norlane we would drive along the Esplanade to go to Geelong to go shopping.  Everytime we drove along there, I used to wonder why people had parked tiny little boats out on the bay.  I loved the sight of the toy boats moored out there but I used to worry for them when it was windy in case they drowned.  Mum used to try to tell me that they were actually big boats that people could sail on but I thought she was mad.. Either that or the boats had an Alice in Wonderland effect and you shrunk when you got onboard.  It took me years to realise that Mum was telling me the truth and it was only that I was so far away from them that they looked so little.

I was pondering this tonight as I’ve been doing some miniaturisation photos for TAFE.  It’s interesting to see how changing the perspective of a photo can give a real life, full sized object, the appearance of a toy.  It’s a bit of fun and I enjoyed doing it.  It did however get me thinking.

Aren’t our problems the same?  The closer we are to them, the bigger they seem.  What a few weeks ago seemed an insurmountable problem, today seems like a mere speck on the horizon.  That situation that you thought was going to overwhelm you, now having moved away from it, seems a mere inconvenience.  The mountain has suddenly turned into a mole hill as you step further away from it.  The  photographic technique is done by changing the focus point and blurring the edges.  Maybe we need to learn to do this in real life.. Change our focus point and close our eyes to the extraneous stuff that don’t really matter.

If only we could all remember that a little bit further down the track, our problems won’t seem as formidable as they do today.  Tomorrow is another day and we may be like those tiny boats being thrown around in the storm.  People may look at us from a distance and think we’re small and weak but the closer you get to us, the bigger and stronger we really are.

Happy putting things in perspective.. Livvy 🙂

The “toy” boats out on Corio Bay.