This post is loosely related to last week’s post regarding gripping it and ripping it. Last week we talked about not knowing how to play golf, this week we move our focus to photography.
As some of you may know one of our director’s shoot’s the catalog’s for their company. Obviously that was a handy benefit before good digital camera’s became affordable, but enough about job benefits. What you need to know is that none of us, including the “photographer” really know’s a f-stop from a bus stop. Photography is not something any of us practice as a hobby, but it is something that we have gotten better at - well we hope so at least. We are saying this where you under that we really do not love photography, and we do not yearn for the next time we will take a picture, it is just something that we need to do sometimes (both for work, for web sites, and for family memories, etc.) and over time we have gotten where we are ok at it, and it is no longer a frustrating experience for us.
Over time, we have learned to do things with photo’s to make them more to our liking. Most of those are clipping, trimming, color and light adjusting. Usually, these are easily accomplished with computers and decent software. However, the thing that we like most is taking color photos and making them grayscale (or black and white). With a computer that is very simple and quick, and that is probably why we like doing it so much. Of course it is also a good excuse to play on a computer, and that alone makes the geek in all of us happy. In addition, grayscale conversion is relatively easy to do when we are tired.
In the process of converting images from color to black and white/grayscale we have learned a interesting thing - there are a lot of missed details in color photos. Follow us for a minute, and see if you do not agree. How many times do we miss seeing something in a photo because there is too many colors (i.e. too much information). When you remove all the “extra” colors and convert it to grayscale / black & white you usually see details that you missed before. By taking the image to it’s most basic it reveals a large amount of this things we missed before. These “newly visible” details make the photo more interesting to us and more enjoyable for us to share with others.
It is the same way many times with God. We miss the details, or the true picture, that He is giving us because we get caught up in the “extra” details. We miss the simple, clean answer because we are too busy looking at all the unrelated information that surrounds it. Many times we factor in human issues that are not really relevant to the circumstances and situation to help make decisions. These “extra” issues are usually where our problem in understanding and action lay. We completely miss the real message because our spiritual focus is drawn away by some “extra” detail that is irrelevant.
So, our challenge to you is to really try to focus on getting rid of all the “extra” information and details in life and try to really see what God has for you. He has a plan for you and He is giving you clear directions to follow, unfortunately our modern lifestyles tend to complicate the matter. To help solve this problem, you have to work on removing all the extra “stuff” that is keeping you from seeing and understanding all that God has for you. By doing that you are likely to see things that you have missed / overlooked / ignored in the past. Of course, this may be a picture that you do not like seeing, but it is one that can help us better understand God’s call.
