Monochrome Madness: Ruins

Posted on October 2, 2025

As the topic for Monochrome Madness this time out is ‘Ruins’, eschewing the easy option of just posting an early morning selfie, I decided to stay with the subject of my Lens-Artists contribution earlier this week: the fabled ruins of the city of Petra.

For an idea of scale in this vast edifice, just take note of the human figures at bottom left.

Category: Black & White, Travel Tagged: Architecture, Black & White, Monochromatic, Monochrome-Madness, Monumental, Petra, Ruins

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Scale

Posted on October 12, 2017

The human figures at bottom right give some idea of the monumental scale of the ruined city of Petra.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Scale

Category: Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Monumental, Petra, Scale, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Half-Light (Ozymandias)

Posted on March 26, 2016

I don’t matter. Ultimately, nobody does.

And if there’s one poem to keep you focused on your own mortality and complete inconsequentiality in the great scheme of things, it must be Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

In other words, however great or important you may think you are, even your most stupendous monuments will not stand the test of time.

Specifically, ‘Ozymandias’ refers to a massive ruined statue of the Pharoah Rameses II. Unfortunately, I don’t have any images of Egyptian ruins, but I do have quite a few showing the ruins of what must once have been (well, still is, even in its current state) the awe-inspiring city of Petra, in Jordan. Including this one:

No doubt the Nabateans, in constructing their ‘rose-red city’, were out to impress, inviting visitors to ‘Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Weekly Photo Challenge: Half-Light

Category: Weekly Photo Challenge Tagged: Half-Light, Monumental, Ozymandias, Petra, Shelley, Weekly Photo Challenge, weeklyphotochallenge

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Monumental

Posted on July 10, 2015

Large? You want large? Take a look at the human figures at bottom left of this image from Petra and you’ll get some idea of the scale of this monumental work.