Standing on the Rim of the World

The road climbs and climbs. Then the trees open, and the whole world drops away in front of you.

The crater. All of it.

It lies there below you like someone scooped a giant bowl out of the earth and filled it with a whole country. Your eyes do not know where to start.

Right at your feet, green bush and dark trees tumble down the steep wall. Below that, the floor opens out, wide and flat and pale, the colour of sand and dry grass. A long silver lake shines in the middle. And all the way round, far, far away, the other side of the rim rises up blue and hazy.

Above it all, white clouds float across a bright blue sky.

The air up here feels cooler. Fresher. You can smell the leaves and the earth.

Nobody talks much. The wind does the talking.

You try to spot animals on the floor. You cannot. It is too big. Everything down there is just tiny specks and shadows. You know they are there. You just cannot see them yet.

And that is the magic. You know the whole thing is alive.

Then you drive down, and the crater changes.

On another drive, the mist sits low over the wall. Grey on grey on grey. Out on the golden grass, a lone elephant has its back to you, heading towards the misty wall. Nothing else moves.

The world goes soft around the edges. Sounds go quiet. It feels like the whole place is holding its breath.

A photo cannot quite hold it. You take one anyway, then another. Then you put the camera down and just stand there.

Some views you look at.

This one you stand inside.

So what makes these frames work?

The rim photo works because of scale. Green in front, pale in the middle, blue at the back. Your eye starts at your feet and travels all the way across to the far wall, and it keeps finding new things on the way. Put it on a big wall and it becomes a window.

The elephant in the mist works the other way. One small dark shape, a lot of soft grey space. It is quiet. It is moody. It makes people stop talking.

Picture the crater as a huge panoramic print running the length of a hotel lobby or a conference room. Picture the misty elephant in a spa, a calm hotel suite, or a quiet corner of a hospital. Picture either one on the opening page of a travel brochure, where the reader turns the page and simply says, wow.

And if you get the chance, stand on that rim yourself. Go on safari in East Africa. Get to the top. Then just look.

You will understand why the photos are so big.

Put a window onto this view in your space. License these photos.

Want your brochure or website to make people say wow? Ask Paul to write it.