Do we really need to See an Alligator's Pimple?

Last night, as I stood in the parking lot at church, trying to get a good picture of the moon, I found myself frustrated by the lack of zoom on my camera.

I wanted to see those craters!

Maybe if I took a couple more steps toward it, I thought, and then immediately laughed.

Yeah, so said the ant as he set out from New York to Los Angeles.

It used to be that I always bought the camera with the biggest zoom, but now, with my latest camera, I have sacrificed the zoom for a crisper, cleaner lens, and I have found that the trade off has not been too horrible.  With my new camera I can zoom and crop after the fact and still have a pretty decent picture.

And, really, not being able to zoom in on an alligator’s pimple is probably a blessing.  Somethings are best left unseen.

Because sometimes, when you zoom in too much, you miss the scene, you miss the setting, you miss the story that the picture is trying to tell you.

This morning, I pulled in behind a man at the Wetlands who had stopped his car in the middle of road, much like I had done the other day when I spotted the caracara.

Off in the distance was a Northern Harrier.  It was so far away that honestly, I was making the assumption based on prior knowledge.  It could have been a hawk, but I knew this was a spot frequented by the Northern Harrier.

I would have liked to have zoomed in on its face.  The Northern Harrier’s face is so distinctive, so startling when you see those owl-like eyes attached to a hawk’s head. 

But not being able to zoom in gave me a greater story to tell.

The barren branches that said winter was still holding on.

The reddish glow of the surrounding brush from the sunrise.

The fact that the harrier was staring into that same rising sun.

I can’t tell you how many times I have seen animals, not just reptiles, turtles and alligators, but birds and yes humans, close their eyes, lift their chins and soak in the sunrise.

There was a story there this morning with the Northern Harrier and one that would have been lost completely had I only focused on its face.