Marcia lost her voice. Patrice lost her freedom. Ken lost his legs.

At some point in our life, we will all experience loss of one kind or another. We may lose a friend or two as we progress through elementary school. We may lose a love in our teens. Our pets can die or run away. 50% of marriages end in divorce.

Some of us may experience the heartbreaking loss of a child through illness, accident, or war. Most of us will have to get over the loss of our parents. We can lose our job.

How do we fill the void?

How do we make the void disappear?

How do we put the pieces of our life together so that everything makes sense again?

It hurt. How do we stop the pain?

We have all heard the expression that nature abhors a vacuum. Weeds are a perfect example. Grow some plot in your garden to grow flowers or vegetables. As soon as that empty space begins to fill up. Not with the flowers or vegetables you planted, but with the weeds. That is the nature that seeks to fill the void.

An empty table or counter in your home is the most attractive magnet for anything you have on hand that needs to be left. Does anyone have a half-empty closet?

Nature also wants us to be full. That feeling of inner emptiness is the way nature pushes us. Our souls and hearts were meant to be full. Loss often turns into a blessing in disguise. Loss was actually nature’s way of calling us to greater wholeness. His way of replacing something inappropriate with something better suited to our potential.

However, we often cannot see beyond the pain. All we feel is pain. But as we begin to rebuild our lives, we are drawn to this greater potential. Sometimes we may feel the need to do more or be more. Sometimes we are guided by forces that we do not understand or are not aware of.

While it may seem like it takes forever, eventually our emptiness fills up. Although we will never forget the loss, it becomes part of your new self. But does it have to take that long? Is there a faster way to fill the void?

Oddly enough, Adobe may have unknowingly found the solution in their latest version of Photoshop, CS5.

One of these great new options in this photo editing software is a feature called “Content Aware Fill”. This feature allows you to crop, erase, or remove any part of your photo and then Photoshop gets to work filling that area with new information calculated from the surrounding pixels.

Before “Content Aware Fill,” the photo editor would have to fill that gap manually, piece by piece, by cloning pixels from the remaining photo or replacing them entirely with some piece from another photograph. Editing the old way could take hours. With “Content Aware Fill”, that time can be reduced to just seconds.

That’s great for filling the void in photos, but how does that relate to the void in our life?

We simply have to do what the Photoshop program does. We must look at the parts of our life that surround emptiness, loss, and see what information is most relevant, most important to us. We must look at all the interests that make up our life and take parts of that to start rebuilding.

During such a crisis in our life, it is natural to focus on loss, on emptiness. To rebuild we must shift our focus to what remains, to all parts of our life. It will happen eventually, but we can make it happen faster.

In my studies I have seen countless examples where photography has been used to accelerate the recovery time of people in loss. Marcia used photography to radically change her life after losing her voice completely in surgical complications. Patrice used the photograph to restore freedom to her life after she was called in to care for her invalid brother. Ken used photography to ease chronic pain and boredom after losing the use of his legs in the line of duty. Many people have used photography as therapy after divorce.

Photography forces you to change your focus and begin to see the infinite beauty in all the wonders of this world. You’re naturally drawn to photographing the things you love when you start out, so it’s easy to forget your troubles. Your emptiness begins to fill with beauty. You smile a lot.

Photography is the “content conscious filling” of life.

To become whole again, to become more than you are, you must do something. You must act. Photography is perfect because it is simple. Everyone can take a picture. Some better than others, but we can all do it. The more you get involved, the more focused you become. You focus on the good and the beautiful.

Photography forces you to get up and go out. It forces you to do something different. As a reward for acting, you will see things you have never seen before. You will meet wonderful people that you have never met before. Right next to what you love there is more; And that’s your Content Aware Fill.

When you need a new view, remember that your camera already has a viewfinder. Why not use it to see all the beauty you’ve been missing? Use your camera to quickly fill the void.