This week’s photo challenge is hosted by a nature photographer. His shot of an icy falls reminds me of some that I took at Wehr Nature Center…and for that reason, I want to go in a different direction. (Yes, I fear comparison!)
“Lost in the Details” is an interesting posture. Are you forgetting the big picture? Are you so overwhelmed that you are purposely choosing to downscale? Or are you simply appreciating the most minute things in wonder? Details… are they petty? or pretty?
This would be a great theme for macrophotography. Unfortunately, I don’t have the lens. Here’s one detail shot that I’ve posted before that I like:
And here’s one that I took this Wednesday after our latest snow storm:
I enjoy details…and I always want to be reminded to look up! (or as my mother would quote from her Girl Scout leader days, “Look wider still.”)
scillagrace 
The devil’s in the detail!
I never really understood what that expression is about…and Wikipedia isn’t making it clearer. What does that mean to you?
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Really it means that if you overlook details when you are planning something it can bring problems later on.. so nothing to do with your photos really 😉
Well, that makes sense. But even the ‘problems’ that arise if you overlook details can be thought of as ‘opportunities’ instead. You didn’t notice that your petrol was low before you started out? Well, now you have the opportunity to find a pump….or walk for a while. (I’m trying to grow out of my fear of devils, you see.)
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😀
A great response to the challenge, which I am enjoying as I go through the blogs. It’s always interesting how each finds something different to illustrate the them. I like both of these, but I miss the snow and am particularly drawn to the second … and getting lost in those details is a meditation, not the devil at all!! 🙂 … I’m not sure I understand that expression either, but it often seems strangely apt.
Blog on …
Happy weekend …
Thanks, Jamie! I do like meditating on details in nature…the universe in intricacies and microcosms lends a message: pay attention!
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Hi Scilla,
A fun post. I just love your mom/s quote, “Look wider still!” I had heard it said that God is in the details. Devil or God, I think it’s often the little things that can make it or break it, a design, a plan, a work of art, or whatever “it” happens to be.
According to Wikipedia, “God is in the details” is the original phrase, which may have originated with a German architect…or Flaubert. I think of the construction of Chartres cathedral or something, and all the painstaking effort offered up as a prayer in work and art. I like that idea!
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I too long for a macro lens. Someday… 🙂 Beautiful pictures!
I know! Isn’t it amazing what they can do? Thanks for visiting! (and your post is so…eldritch! Love it, H.P.!)
I adore the details of the first image. Gorgeous lighting. Lovely.
Thank you! Sunday morning in a historic hotel in West Virginia…it was a lovely morning!
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‘Lost’ is the crucial bit for me…be it ‘detail’ or ‘the big picture’, if you can get lost in it, whatever it is, I reckon its done the trick…
Are those real feathers?
The trick being ‘engaged your attention’ or ‘absorbed you’? The thing is, we’re pretty easily distracted and absorbed, even by trivial stuff. And that’s not the stuff I want to get lost in. Well, not for very long. I still have the desire to spend my time on “important” things. Ideological of me, I guess. And yes, those are real feathers, in a plastic slip case.
‘Attention engaged’ or ‘totally absorbed’ both sound OK to me…Hopefully I’ve got a bit of a built in trivia filter, and sure, I’m happy devoting some of my head space to important things…….But sometimes I resent it.
Sometimes I want to wallow up to my wrinkly old neck in ‘pretty little nothings’ and simply get lost in ephemera….
The feathers struck a chord by the way…My Grandmother used to have literally hundreds of feathers that she’d sandwiched between sheets of plastic and hung around her painting room.
Nothing exotic just ones she’d found around the UK….Every now and again she’d take one down and put it in the window (back-lit like in your photo) and get me to paint it…..At the time she convinced me I was the next Monet……I wasn’t…..
Thank you so much for telling me about your Grandmother and her feathers! What a delightful connection. I’d love to see what you might create with feathery inspiration! A flight of fancy into “pretty little nothings” perhaps. Ah, but they are so essential and significant to a bird!
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I’ll muse on the feather thing…..though I tell you now, it wont be a painting…at least not in the wet brushy dauby kinda way..
🙂
I’ll wait patiently…and hopefully! 🙂
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Breath baited…….