Hello World
3-2-1 Launch!
I'm so excited to launch my new website and blog, The Wondrous World of Leslie Banks! I'm not wondrous, but the world is. Or it can be when you look at the details.
I've been photographing since I was about 14 years old (decades, that is), and it's taught me to appreciate the beauty and intricacies of life. When capturing moments through a lens and magnifying images on screen, I often marvel at the detail found in living and non-living things that are often overlooked in passive observation. Stamens in flowers, vibrant feathers on birds, vast landscapes made of tiny pebbles and pine needles, subtle highlights on a painted portrait, lifelike emotions conveyed through still-life sculpture. The details make the difference between ordinary and extraordinary.
Making Connections
This website is all about connecting the details, the moments and people who make them. The internet has given us an extraordinary opportunity to make connections by linking information with visuals and sounds. Though I'm a not a web designer, recent advancements in software development have given non-coders like me the ability to create a website for that purpose.
With a blank slate before me, I created this lifestyle website and blog to cover categories where I feel I have something to contribute. And with my personal catalog of thousands of images, I bring a visual dimension to my experiences. Categories include photography, travel, gardening, birding, animals, and hiking, and I look forward to expanding into other areas like cooking and education later on. As a long-time resident of the Washington, DC metropolitan area, I'll also have a lot to say about the people, places, art and architecture that made American history.
In each category, I am both creating and curating content, pulling the best resources I can find to accompany my written and photographic material, making connections within and between categories. For example, if you want to visit a historic place on my travel list, you'll find the people and events connected to them, along with videos, books, images and other reference material that will help enrich your tourist experience. For gardening, you'll find things like recommended products, books, courses, websites and videos that will help you explore each topic even further. Then, where appropriate, you'll find the connections between gardening and those historic places and people.
I do my best to research the content that I create and curate so that I'm not wasting your time with low quality or duplicative information. This is a very time-intensive process, so it will take awhile to distill years' worth of material into concise web pages. Ultimately, my goal is to educate and inspire my readers into finding the beauty in life and all of its remarkable details and connections.
Get the Updates
If you'd like to receive updates on new posts, pages and discoveries, please subscribe to my newsletter. In the meantime, check out some of the pages I've created so far:
Burke Lake Park
Assateague Island National Seashore
Charters of Freedom
U.S. Government
or get the facts about
or find out some great things to do in
This is just the beginning! Enjoy!
