Travel theme: Details

I love taking great, dramatic, sweeping photos but sometimes you can tell more from just one little detail than from a great panorama. When I was photographing the Witness Trees in Seattle, although the photos of the full artworks were great for telling the story, the shots focusing on the details were infinitely more appealing to me, perhaps because they showed the intricacy that is easy to miss from a distance. Here are some details from the Clam Tree and the Fossil Tree.

This delicate swathe of slightly scorched-looking flowers growing against a wooden fence will always remind me of late summer in drought-ravaged Wisconsin.

This next photo encapsulates for me the sense of wonder I felt when I first set eyes on Lava Canyon on the south side of Mount St Helens. The remnants of a scorched tree bear witness to the 1980 volcanic eruption that obliterated everything in its wake, but it has been overtaken by this incredible surge of regeneration. Fresh, lime green conifers no taller than waist height dotted around a carpet of purple flowers, bright green mosses and silvery grey foliage. To give a sense of scale, a tiny ground squirrel obligingly stopped right in the centre of my frame for a photo opp. One tiny moment filled with so many details.

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xxx Ailsa

I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does. – Jorge Luis Borges

Every man’s life ends the same way. It’s only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. – Ernest Hemingway

About ailsapm

Hi there! I’m Ailsa Prideaux-Mooney. I’ve lived in many places, and travelled to many more. I had a lot of fun getting there and being there, wherever there happened to be at the time. I climbed a castle wall in Czesky Krumlov, abseiled down cliffs to go caving in the west of Ireland, slept on the beach in Paros, got chased by a swarm of bees in Vourvourou (ok that wasn’t fun, but it was exciting), learned flower arranging in Tokyo, found myself in the middle of a riot in Seoul, learned to snowboard in Salzburg, got lost in a labyrinth in Budapest and had my ice cream stolen by a gull in Cornwall. And I’m just getting started. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read so far, I’d love you to follow my travelogue - wheresmybackpack.com - and remember, anyone who tries to tell you it’s a small world hasn’t tried to see it all.

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