The World Wide Panorama

Introduction

The March 2012 event on the theme of “Paths” has 83 panoramas. Photography was done between March 16 and 22, and the long-term events “Culture” and “Forests” were open for new contributions at the same time.

Theme Essay: Paths

The essay conveys the team’s idea of the event. It is usually published together with the Theme announcement and offers a starting point for the contributing photographers.

Paths

by Pat Swovelin

noun, plural paths [pathz, pahthz, paths, pahths].
1. a way beaten, formed, or trodden by the feet of persons or animals.
2. a narrow walk or way: a path through a garden; a bicycle path.
3. a route, course, or track along which something moves: the path of a hurricane.

Initially that may sound pretty boring but once you start to think about it as it relates to where you are on the planet all sorts of possibilities open up. Paths involves both paths of the present world (e.g., freeways, roads and sidewalks, insect/animal trails, contrails (they show the paths in the sky planes fly in), star trails, rivers, glaciers) and of the past also (e.g., where Hannibal crossed the Alps or the paths that Asians used when they migrated across Beringa and wound up populating the western hemisphere or where ships sailed from the Marquesas and later discovered Hawai’i or all roads lead to Rome or the scarring left in cliffs by glaciers as they moved towards the sea or an old lava flow). There are paths all around you if you just have the eyes to see them.

Be creative.

Show us some.