It might seem that I've been posting a disproportionate number of macro photographs lately.
You might be right.
First, this part of the Rocky Mountains (not unlike the Pacific Northwest-proper) has a considerable number of gray, overcast days, particularly in late spring and autumn, respectively. These conditions limit the glorious-landscape availability (at times, they limit any landscape availability, swallowing the mountains whole and making it seem like you exist on the edge of a fog-ridden abyss).
Necessity aside, however, with Nature preparing for deep sleep, it becomes more difficult to find subjects. The latter sharpens your senses, forces you to pay attention to minute details you would've otherwise overlooked. Limited opportunities lead to creative solutions.
Trite, but true.
In fact, I still remember my irritation in a graphic-design class in college years ago, when my professor prevented us from using any kind of imagery for a hypothetical book-cover assignment solely focused on typography. In the end, we, his third-year students, learned through experiment that we had to push ourselves that much harder, but that our resultant projects were that much more original. (Well, with the exception of the lazy hipsters. And, if you must know, I--despite being a goody two-shoes overachiever (!)--was somewhere in the middle.)
In principle, Nature photography is not much different. Summer, with its abundance of life all around, provides countless chances, but also increases your expectations. Late autumn, in contrast, makes you work for it.
And so you find berries suspended in the air like earrings that would suit a long-necked woman, melting ice on evergreens resembling early Christmas lights, partly torn birch bark--that ancient form of paper for pagan Slavs, and amber aspen leaves barely holding on to a foreign tree and partially eaten away to form a complex lace-like pattern.
You noticed.
