The Big Picture

I’ve been obsessed lately with trying to take a decent picture of the Lincoln Park Conservatory that does justice to its setting.  I’ve tried going there at different times of day, but the shadows can be distracting and it’s difficult to find the right vantage that does justice to the building, the central fountain, the gardens, and the statue at the foot of the scene.

I jumped off the bus last night on my way home to take a bunch of pictures to photoshop into a panorama.  It was fun, because, while taking the different pictures to be stitched together, I captured many people who were actually passing through the park at different moments (though the man sitting beneath the statue was there the whole time).

The finished photograph combines about six or seven photographs into one scene.  It was very cloudy at the time, even sprinkling a little, which equalized the light and let the colors of the plantings pop out nicely.  The dimness also brought out the beauty of the old trees and shrubs that define the boundary between the annual gardens and the zoo beyond.  This is definitely my best picture of the conservatory grounds.

My worry about capturing the ‘big picture’ extends far beyond this one scene.  Can I use blogging to create something like a “true mosaic” of my identity?  That curiosity is what prompted me to start this blog—my second—under an assumed name.  Given that chronic over-extension is one of my biggest problems in life, deciding to write multiple blogs was probably crazy.  Yet who knows?  Like the notebooks kept by the heroine of The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, my various illustrated ‘diaries’—variously intellectual, civic, and personal—may lead to a satisfying sense of wholeness one day.