Weekly Photo Challenge: Near and Far

I really enjoy playing with near and far in my landscape photography.  Picking a tiny detail out of a sweeping background changes a pretty scene into something just that bit more unusual, and gives the viewer a sense of being in the landscape rather than just looking at it through a frame.  The knack is to spot that special something, then make sure that both your detail and your landscape are in focus.  I don’t always succeed with the latter, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.

Near and a Bit Far

On the black sands near Jokulsarlon, Iceland, icebergs from the nearby glacier lake wash up on the shore, to be slowly beaten down back to the water they began life as a millennium ago.

Near and Quite Far

Almannaskarð is a high mountain pass on the east coast of Iceland, once considered the most dangerous part of the road than circles the country.  Nowadays a tunnel goes underneath the mountain, but if you have a tough car and a bit of bravery, you can still drive up to the highest point of the old pass and look out over the bay to the Vatnajokull glacier beyond.  In the car park is a sign quoting an Icelandic author, who states, “If you have not seen the view from Almannaskarð, you have not seen Iceland at all”.

The coastline and the flowers aren’t as sharp as I should have managed, but I like it anyway.

Near and Really Really Far

In the USA this time, in Utah.  This Canyonlands National Park, as viewed from Dead Horse State Park. Here the Colorado River and the red rock form a unique landscape that goes on forever.  I think I can be forgiven for not managing pin-sharp focus on the distant haze.

Walking is the pace of thinking

Turning on the TV on a Sunday afternoon is rarely productive.  Relaxing, yes, often necessarily so, but not productive.

Today I flicked through ABC (Australia) and stumbled upon a short documentary about the writer Will Self and his obsession with walking.  In 2010 he walked from his home in south London to Heathrow, boarded a plane, then walked from Los Angeles airport to Hollywood.  The walk was a means to an end, not to arrive in Hollywood, but to connect with the urban landscape and provide inspiration and introspection for a narrative for a new book.

It didn’t turn out all rosy for him, taking him on unexpected mental twists so that although he arrived in Hollywood as planned, inside he was lost.  But along the way he said, “Walking is the pace of thinking”.  Walking is 4/4 time, a beat set by your own body at the speed of your brain’s choosing.

I often walk quite fast, but that doesn’t make me a fast thinker.  Quite the opposite in fact; I’m forcing myself to minimise the time I spend walking so I can get to home or to work and back to the latest distraction from my brain.  My thoughts when walking like this are very little beyond the observational (“oh, the jasmine on that fence is dying”) and the shallow (“what’s for dinner?”).

But Self’s comment was a reminder that walking for the sake of walking is when I love taking photos the best.  The surroundings soak in and my brain bumbles along, and suddenly images spring to my eye that I’d never noticed before.

Scottish Thistle

Walking around Richmond Park, London, netted me these two little details.

Trash or Treasure?

Walking with Will Self is the documentary, and “Walking to Hollywood” is Self’s book, now on my to-read list.

 

ALL the Red

Enough pity party. Have instead a photo that for some reason just always makes me smile. It’s something about the sheer REDness of this little flower. It’s not just red, it’s RED, really red, and to me it’s smiling, looking cheerily out to the world.

I think this one’s a gerbera, but do correct me if I’m wrong.

Is it a problem that I anthropomorphise flowers?