Happy Sunday! Sofia from Photographias is hosting this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge with the theme – Sense of Scale.

It’s strange, isn’t it? That when it comes to photography, one can get a sense of scale only by either a person standing next to the subject, image comparison like this one, and, well, common sense.

Ever since I got my super zoom 18-400 mm lens, I’ve developed a habit of shooting my subject up and close. At the same time, for my own memory’s sake, I also shoot one that shows the grander scale of things, that the patterns of the canyons repeats as far as the eye can see.

These photos were taken back to back during day 1 of 2 at the Grand Canyon last December. I entered the park from east rim as opposed to the majority of people who enter from south rim. I like the east rim more than the south rim. For one, the crowd is lighter and two, I get the view of the Colorado River snaking its way through the canyon from this angle.

The first picture is Ueno Park, near the Tokyo National Museum. I can’t believe I nearly forgot this picture.

I remember wanting to take a photo of the path and trees but a bunch of old people were lounging around on the benches, reading newspapers. As much as I didn’t want to include people in my photo, I guess I had to in this instance but, hey, this photo came in handy, didn’t it?

I’ve been to the Redwood forest in Northern California once about 13 years ago, and yes, the redwood trees were huge but I feel like some of these old trees in Japan can totally compete with the redwoods for size, just look at the trees at Meiji Temple.

If you ever watched travel videos on Tokyo, Japan, almost always, they will point out Mount Fuji in the distance. As far as I know, Mount Fuji is seen nearly everywhere in the vicinity of Tokyo and Yamanashi prefecture. Viewing Mount Fuji is the tricky part, one must rise at dawn to see it without clouds, this was at about 8:30 AM, clouds have already begun to set in.

This is Kawaguchiko, by the way, a town near Mount Fuji. I believe we still have to take a 30-minute bus ride before reaching the base (5th station) of Mount Fuji.

To be honest, without the snow, Mount Fuji looked just like any other mountain.

Finally, this was Capitol Reef National Park, May 2021. We were at the Panorama Point and my aunt somehow found her way onto the lone rock. There she was, just sitting there looking at her phone. I thought it was hilarious, how from my perspective, she looked like a child waiting for someone to go pick her up.

I only had a 17-70 mm lens back then and even at 70 mm, she looked small compared to the rocks beneath.