ᛈ | The Day I Pointed a Telescope the Wrong Way

It arrived in a box, but it felt more like a key. The cold, dense weight of the Canon 100mm macro lens was the weight of possibility. For years, my passion has been the grand canvas—the sweeping vistas, the dramatic interplay of light and land. But this lens promised a different kind of epic: the universe hidden in a water droplet, the intricate geometry of a moss spore, the story etched onto a beetle's wing. I was thrilled. A new language of light and shadow was waiting to be learned.

There was only one place to go for such an inaugural trial: Bälingeberget. It is my sanctuary, my visual whetstone. The familiar trails, the scent of damp earth and pine, the steadfast granite—it's the landscape I know by heart. It has taught me so many lessons about capturing the grand scale of nature.

And that, turns out, was my first mistake.

With the new lens mounted on my camera, I walked the familiar paths, but my eyes were scanning the ground. I approached the task with the mind of a landscape photographer. I found a splintered piece of fallen wood and framed its jagged silhouette against the blurred forest floor. I was capturing things, treating this powerful lens like a standard prime with a closer focusing distance. I was documenting subjects, not discovering worlds.

The familiar ritual of returning home, the hum of the computer, the click of the memory card sliding into its slot, was filled with anticipation. The images populated the screen. I clicked the first one to view it full-screen.

And my heart sank.

The images were... fine. But they lacked the crystalline sharpness I was accustomed to. They felt soft, underwhelming. Nothing leaped from the screen. A flicker of disappointment, sharp and unwelcome, pricked at me. Had I misjudged this? Was the magic I'd imagined just clever marketing?

Then, out of a mix of frustration and forensic curiosity, I double-clicked on an image of a simple mossy rock. The software zoomed in, rendering the file at its true, 1:1 size.

The world fractured and reformed.

My breath caught in my throat. The screen was no longer a screen; it was a portal. What had been a soft, green patch resolved into a dense, alien forest of individual moss stalks, each one impossibly perfect. The "rock" was a landscape of microscopic craters and canyons.

I frantically opened another photo—the one of the splintered wood. The "flat" surface I had barely noticed was, in reality, a rugged terrain of microscopic canyons and weathered ridges. A fine dusting of what I had assumed was dirt now resolved into individual, glittering specks—tiny crystals catching the light like a field of fallen stars. I had been so focused on the wood's jagged profile that I had missed the universe etched upon its surface.

The lens wasn't a lens; it was a microscope. I had been pointing a telescope at the ground, expecting to see the moon, and then felt disappointed when all I saw was dirt. The fault wasn't in the glass, but in the vision behind it. I had been taking pictures from a distance, even when I was centimetres away.

A new kind of thrill, more potent than the first, ignited within me. The disappointment was gone, replaced by the exhilarating humility of a true beginner. I haven't failed; I have been given a new direction. The challenge isn't just to use this lens, but to rewire my own perception, to learn to see the epic in the infinitesimal.

I am determined to master this. Today marks the first step on an exciting journey, uncovering a world that has always been within reach, patiently waiting to be explored.

Embrace the  challenge. Together, let's delve into this hidden world and unveil its wonders.

Discover more about the fascinating world of Macro Photography here!