Out of the Corner of My Eye

Sometimes
I feel a presence
Out of the corner of my eye

Some one
Some thing

Looking out for me and mine

I turn to look
But it’s never there

But there enough to know
The universe is benevolent
Even if not all its children are

Out of the Corner of My Eye
North Window Arch
Arches National Park
Utah, United States of America

Taken during travels, 2022

I shot this scene with my fisheye, which sees everything in a 180 degree field of view from the lens. Really wide. Even I often forget how wide and have numerous photographs of my blurry fingers creeping into the frame as they hold the lens.

It was Memorial Day Weekend in the USA when I shot this, and tourism was beginning to rebound after two years of pandemic restrictions, so Arches National Park was crowded. Tough to get a photograph without a swarm of humanity in the frame. (Truth be told: I photoshopped a few extra bodies out of this one. Sssshhhhh! ) Although fellow tourists can be quite accommodating about staying out of each other’s photographs, few understand just how wide a berth they need to give an ultra-wide lens. The woman on the right was quite happy to back out as much as I asked her to…

…it was my miscalculation that managed to put her face barely on the right edge of the frame.

Neither an error on her part or mine, though. It was just the benevolent universe providing inspiration for a poem. Or you can call it serendipity if you prefer. 😉

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1

sonyavdg on Sep 17, 2022 at 2:34 pm

Awesome shot. The fish eye lens really works to show just how vast thing are

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- 2
  
  Patrick Jennings on Sep 17, 2022 at 10:46 pm
  
  Thank you, Sonya. ❤ I love that lens.
  
  That roadtrip produced a lot of landscape photographs. Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico… some of the most spectacular landscapes in North America, so no surprise there. 🙂
  
  So far, of the photographs taken during that trip that have been featured in posts for this blog, the Samyang 8mm captured more than all my other lenses combined. The 10-24mm Fuji zoom used to be my goto landscape lens. Only half as many photos from that wide zoom have found their way to the blog. And my 16-55mm Fuji zoom — which is no slouch for shooting landscapes — was used for about a quarter of the images shot with the fisheye.
  
  I also have a 55-200mm Fuji. I hardly even put that on the camera, though in the past I've often used it for landscape. So far, not a single photograph from that trip using the long zoom has found its way to Pix to Words.
  
  Guess I'm just seeing the world with ultra-wide eyes. 😉
  
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3

Mellow Curmudgeon on Sep 17, 2022 at 3:43 pm

I did not notice the sliver of face on the far right until after reading the backstory. Keeping the face does go well with the poem.

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  Patrick Jennings on Sep 17, 2022 at 10:29 pm
  
  I was editing the photo for a good 10 or 15 minutes before I noticed it. The phrase running around in my head until then was “family snapshot” and poetic themes were already forming. All that pretty much went out the window once the face became apparent. 😉
  
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- 5
  
  Patrick Jennings on Sep 17, 2022 at 10:34 pm
  
  And thank you, Mellow. 🙂
  
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