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My new project is concerned with the timing of natural events—in particular, when (and why) leaves change color in the fall—and my motivation for taking these other photos is likewise to document the cycles of nature: When do insect nymphs emerge? When do herbs bloom and die down?
I think that doing field work has, however, helped me appreciate one sort of instantiation of what a "sense of place" could be. One often returns to the same place over and over, witnessing its cycles through the seasons: the emergence and subsidence of this or that plant, leaf-out and leaf drop, the successive waves of biting insects (unfortunately), and so on. The blazing reds and oranges of forests in eastern temperate North America are comparable to few other places on Earth, and I think they exert a sort of emotional pull on many people who grew up here, even if they don't quite know it. In any case, I was trying to document an attempt to observe more closely and internalize the patterns of the changing landscape.
