all creatures great and small
Walking through Silver Lakes park this fall morning, most of the plants along its' shoreline were barren of flowers and leaves, thus provided little color. Naturally that made this group of plants stick out as buds just starting to open are the exception not the rule this time of year. Hardly uncommon, these ubiquitous berries, are probably what separates survival and starving to the local birds that choose to stay here rather than fly south. And sure enough when I looked down a few inches at a nook created by a cluster of branches on this plant, you could see lots of chewed up berry parts, the remnants of a hearty meal for some bird.
Of all these berry bearing plants strung all over the lake, this was the only one that provided a somewhat interesting compositional opportunity - though the composition is subtle to be sure. With my 105mm micro left home to save space in my tiniest camera bag (I wanted to travel light as I knew I would be walking for hours), in the past I would have had forgo a shot like this, with no way to get magnification this high. But now with my new 17-70mm Sigma DC macro lens finally providing me a optic that was as good at capturing distance shots as it was at capturing macro ones, I finally had a general purpose lens in my arsenal for days just like this.
