Lens-Artists Challenge, #370: Ancient

Lens-Artists Challenge, #370: Ancient

I've been a bit lazy with the Challenge this week. It's Sofia’s turn to host the Challenge, and her theme is 'Ancient'. On her blog, photographias, she writes, (https://photographias.wordpress.com/2025/10/18/lens-artists-challenge-370-ancient/) 'the challenge is Ancient, as in things that belong to a distant past.' She continues, 'I’m looking for anything that has had an existence of many years.' Just now we're staying at a resort in the Maldives. While the resort has only been in existence for a few decades, the island on which it is situated has been around for millennia.

The Republic of Maldives is comprised of 1,192 Islands in a chain of 26 atolls made up of coral reefs and sand bars. With an established history of over 2,500 years, I think it counts as ancient for the terms of the Challenge, so I thought I would look at the foundation on which it was built — the coral reef — especially at the patterns of the coral washed up on the beach. Over the years, dead coral is broken off the reef and washed up onto shore. Over the decades and centuries, this is ground down to a coarse crystalline sand.

There are also a lot of hermit crabs on the island, especially on the sea front. Most of these are small, occupying shells barely a couple of centimetres long, but some, like the two shown, were quite large, about 5cm and 10cm long, respectively. The shells were battered and eroded, and the crabs inhabiting these shells must be really old.

Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can post their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here (https://photobyjohnbo.com/about-lens-artists/), and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag 'Lens-Artists'.

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