...in the Details

Week 38

...in the Details

September 22, 2010

Last week I found myself on Carmel Beach in Carmel-By-The-Sea, and looking down. There are lots of interesting subjects to photograph here - birds pecking for morsels in the sand, the beautiful Pacific crashing against the beach, famous Pebble Beach Golf Links and a wide variety of people there as tourists or enjoying where they live. What drew my attention though, was the sand. It wasn't especially different from sand on most American beaches as far as I can tell, but it wasn't that intriguing me. I was thinking about how incredibly intricate the individual grains are.

Now if you're like me, you don't often think about sand in terms of the individual grains. The image above was composed with the idea of allowing for context and identification, but also to show a level of detail not usually observed. You can see the extensive variety of colors and shapes and relative sizes the individual grains represent. Many are similar, but none are identical.

I think we frequently consider people this way. We assume because an individual is part of a people group, they are like all others classified in that people group. The truth (if we pay attention and look closely) is far from this idea. Sure, there are commonalities in culture, activities or physical features at times; but each person, each grain (if we pay attention) was created and molded uniquely and cannot be replicated. My hope is that we would keep this in mind when we make judgments on others that we think are justified. After all, what people-group are you in? What are the things you think are mis-understood about your people-group, and about you?

image above taken with Canon 5D MII, 24-105 4L lens, 1/1600 @f4, ISO 100