I watch you
Taking in the wide oxbow landscape
A thousand feet deep
While I photograph the small details
Of tumbled stone and distant valleys
If you could embrace
The vastness of space
Then even a galaxy
Would be a minor detail
In the landscape of infinity
And I?
Not even a speck
To speak my insignificance
Demands more consideration
Than my infinitesimal displacement
Of time and space deserves
And yet
Here are we
The infinitesimal
Contemplating the infinite
Which I suppose
Is big enough
For me
Perhaps
Even…
Divine
Like the way a river
Has carved this earth
For millions of years
And left a canyon here
To pique our wonder
The Small Details of Erosion
Goosenecks State Park
Utah, United States of America
Taken during travels, 2022
Generally, I use the “Detail” hashtag to categorize closeups: photographs taken either with a very long lens or with the lens very close to the subject. It’s sometimes a stand-in for “Macro”, but not always. I reserve Detail for images capturing some small part (or small collection of parts), belonging to a bigger thing.
The featured photograph above was shot with a relatively short lens given that it’s two main subjects are one mile away (1.6km, that mound of broken rock centered in the frame) and twelve and a half miles away (20km, which is the bit of Monument Valley in the upper right on the horizon that was Forrest Gump’s backdrop when he decided to stop running).
I used a 16-55mm zoom lens to take the featured photo above. It was set at 47mm (about 70mm on a 35mm full frame camera), which is just barely telephoto. However, compared to the 8mm fisheye lens I used from the same spot to capture all the oxbows at Goosenecks State Park the previous day, well, 47mm is pretty long.
So, in a relative way, the featured photograph captures the smallest of details within the scope of the ultra-wide shot below. Kinda like embracing the entire universe while looking for a single galaxy, or one little guy standing on the banks of the San Juan River in Utah taking a picture.
(Click on the photo to see it full size.)
Pix to Words 