I am the eye in the sky

Wide angle city
Toronto, ON, March 2011

About this photo: Thematic. Aerial. Still taking submissions. Here.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when they take pictures is trying to get too much of the scene into one composition. They compose so widely that they end up including everything and the kitchen sink. The camera never gets close enough to anything to make out any detail. In my mind's eye, I think of pictures of my mother, a speck in the middle of a giant expanse of beach. Or public square. Or park. At least I think that's my mother. Or a speck on the lens.

So as I reviewed the pictures from my recent as-luck-would-have-it flight into Toronto's main airport (Pearson International aka YYZ) and tried to decide which one to share here, the easy thing to do would have been to pick the more tightly composed views of the downtown core. There's nothing like a golden-hour shot of the iconic CN Tower, after all.

But the thing is if you've seen one iconic view, you've seen 'em all. And I hate being derivative. Instead, the first picture I took as we curved eastward, tracing the Lake Ontario coast, is the one I ultimately chose. It was the placeholder, the one that made my heart flutter just a bit as I realized this wasn't just another boring approach, the one that set the stage for whatever came next. Sure, it's wide. But it's got a spirit to it that the more standard compositions lack. Sometimes, you have to look wide to get a feel for a place.

Maybe I should break these old rules more often.

Your turn: Who's down there?