Right before I moved, I went through some major nostalgia and tried to take a picture of everything I could. I'm still not sure if I was trying to stop time or capture moments that I was (still am?) afraid I was never going to catch again. Regardless of the reason, this was one of the images of which I was particularly proud.
It's the view from my grandparent's yard looking into the hay meadow. The whole yard was lined in barbed wire, but there was this chain-link gate that provided easy access to the tractor barn (and, yes, the tractor barn has seen better days). I couldn't start to count the number of times that I looked through the links of that fence; whether I was waiting for my dad to come in for lunch after cutting hay, watching my little brother walk down to fish in the pond a couple of fences away, or deciding whether I should risk the high grass to go visit the chicken coop, it seems like my childhood was spent viewing things from that perspective.
But here's the thing: I sent this image to my parents and they had no clue where I had taken this shot. They both said something to the effect of, "Nice picture. Where were you when you took it?" These were two adults who have spent even more time on this piece of land than I did and they didn't even recognize it. This absolutely blew my mind.
After I explained the "where" both my mom and dad explained that the chain-link had thrown them. The chain-link gate, something they had unlatched and opened and closed and latched back hundreds of time over their lives was the thing they couldn't place. But I realized that, as adults, they always had the height to look over it and a purpose to walk through it; there was no wistful gazing happening from their point of view. While looking at the hay meadow they always had a to-do list that they would try to get done as soon as possible.
It's because of this experience that this image will forever be my reminder that "point of view" isn't just a figure of speech and that everyone had their own way of seeing the world.