Our brains are surprisingly bad at understanding scale. We know something is “huge” or “tiny,” but until it’s placed next to something familiar—a person, a house, a car—it doesn’t really click. That’s where these photos come in.
The images from the “How big is it?” subreddit capture moments where size becomes the main character. A giant octopus-shaped kite floating effortlessly over a field of people. A captain standing in front of a ship. A man standing near a jet that suddenly makes humans look microscopic. These scenes don’t rely on editing or tricks—they’re real, and that’s what makes them so fascinating.
These images remind us how small we are compared to the world around us—and how awe-inspiring that can be. Whether it’s nature showing off its raw power or human engineering pushing scale to its limits, each photo tells the same story: perspective changes everything.
Scroll down and prepare to rethink what “big” really means.
#1 Two people sitting on the Abraj Al Bait clocktower in Mecca
#2 Salt Mines Of Garmsar, Iran
#3 Giant container ship blocking the Suez canal today
#4 I never knew what absolute U N I T S Clydesdales are until I saw this picture.
#5 Christ the Redeemer getting some maintenance for its upcoming 90th birthday
#6 Solar power station in Chile with one cell for scale
#7 Petra in south Jordan
#8 This is a Spanish flag flown at the battle of Trafalgar
#9 Queen Mary 2 with its Captain
#10 One of the huge rings they used for close-up shots in LORD OF THE RINGS
#11 Indoor vertical farm
#12 Majestic Picture of Hallgrímskirkja, a church in Iceland.
#13 Tsunami tetrapod barriers
#14 Absolute door unit
#15 Marble floor of the Florence Cathedral
#16 Crazy Horse memorial. South Dakota.
#17 The Quetzalcoatlus Northropi, the largest known flying animal that ever existed!
#18 A sinkhole in Turkey
#19 Giant manta ray captured on the coast of New Jersey in 1933
#20 The largest statue in the world, the Statue of Unity in India, is four times taller than the Statue of Liberty.
#21 Beaver City, Nebraska resident Audra Thomas poses with a Category F-1 Tornado near her family farm (in background) – Kodak Contest Winning photo by Merrilee Thomas, 1989
#22 The wonders in our world. 150 ft. Iceberg passing through Iceberg Alley near Ferryland, Newfoundland, Canada
#23 This door was 8 ft (2.4 m) thick, nearly 12 ft (3.7 m) wide, and weighed 97,000 lbs (44,000 Kg).
#24 Sukhoi Su-57 fighter plane
#25 This actually terrifies me.
#26 Preikestolen towers 604 metres above Lysefjord on the west coast of Norway.
#27 The Monument to the Conquerors of Space is a 107-meter-tall, titanium obelisk in Moscow that was completed in 1964 to celebrate Soviet space exploration achievements.
#28 Stacks of Lumber In A Seattle Lumberyard (1919)
#29 Tianjin Binhai Library in China
#30 Kite
