Day 13: Creative Writing Challenge

This is a 30-day writing challenge for the month of March where I will write a new post about a picture/video/idea each day.

At First Glance

Small person or large camera present in image.

Man is on a ladder climbing to look inside the camera lens.

Camera is placed in a place where there is a lot of greenery.

The Story Behind the Picture

Paul loves to go on excursions and explore nature. He grew up on his own in a rainforest and spent most of his day just walking around the forest. Paul was in the rainforest for over 15 years— it was so big that he could never explore everything in 1–2 visits.

Paul never knew anything outside of the forest as he had never been to the city. He honestly does not have any knowledge of what the world looks like outside of what he had already seen. While in the forest, Paul survived by eating ants and bugs, drank water whenever it rained and stored some locally, and had a large plastic shelter for whenever it rained. He found many different appliances to keep him alive by exploring the rainforest he was in, so everyday that is exactly what he did — he was an explorer.

While walking around the forest one day, Paul ran into a large wall that was silver at the bottom and black in the middle. Paul decides to walk around the big black wall only to notice a large narrow cylinder with a lens at the front. He believed that if he got a better view, he could figure out what was obstructing his path this morning.

Paul notes this down and walks back to the his house to get a ladder to help him climb up the camera for a better view. He hauled back to the camera with his ladder and climbed to the top. He climbed up on top and slipped on a shiny black circle. Right when he slipped and fell, the camera produced a bright light and made a loud clicking sound.

Paul was shocked. He did not know what just happened. He continued to play with the camera and continued to produce flashes by jumping on the button. However, right before dawn that day, Paul had exhausted the amount of clicks and the lens showed a large blue screen showed up that read “insufficient memory.

Paul did not know English, nor did he know what that meant, but he continued to play with the buttons in hopes to produce that light again. It was Pauls vision that this flash could be useful in producing light when it is dark in the forest.

Paul proceeded to investigate the camera by jumping on top and checking all the buttons in an attempt to produce the light again. He could not get it to work. Paul then started playing with the buttons on the left side and when he looked in the lens, he saw really big looking people.

There were many different pictures of young giants, old giants, female giants, huge buildings, and more. One of the giants had crossed paths with Paul in the past and they almost stepped on him for not realizing he was there. Paul was so intrigued that he kept coming back each day to view the images in the camera by peaking in the lens.

Paul’s curiosity got to the best of him and he became obsessed with looking at the pictures and viewing the world of the giants in the photo. Unfortunately, about two weeks later Paul went about his usual day and walked towards the camera to view the pictures again. However, he could not find it.

He had been spending each day walking the route to the camera that there was no way he could have lost the path. Paul felt alone again, and started frantically searching for the camera. He wanted to see more pictures because they were foreign to him and he found them interesting.

Unfortunately, Paul never saw the camera again. He did find many large items that were likely left by giants, but he could not find the camera with the images on it.

This is a story about a man who is a member of an almost extinct species of people who are extremely small (15–25cm). He never met anyone that was similar to him where he lived. That is because he lived in the garden of a home that was abandoned. The camera was dropped by a teenager who was out galavanting with friends. The teenager came back to pick up his camera after he realized it was missing as he needed to upload the pictures he took while on vacation to his laptop.

The grass was always too high for Paul to see above it so he was under the impression that he was normal, and others around him were giants. Paul did not have any family members that he could recall and therefore believed that he was alone in a forest. His perception of the world shaped what Paul did day to day.

As you can tell, Paul was curious, intelligent, and a natural explorer. However, he limited himself to his surroundings and therefore could not realize that he was trapping himself into a confined space. Please take this into account as you live your own life. You need to break through your own barriers, or you will continue to limit yourself and prevent yourself from reaching your true potential.