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Paul Flatt
I am a retired meteorologist and an amateur photographer. I would rather be outside almost anywhere on earth than inside. I have been taking pictures most of my 66 years on this planet. Most recently I use a Nikon digital camera with my most recent addition a 105mm macro lens so I can get really close to the small things around us.
I first got into landscape photography to record wild places I visit while backpacking. I have taken lots of pictures of the grand landscape with mountains, lakes, sunsets, or other big things visible. When I look at most of my pictures I see many of them just don't show the grandness that I observed and felt when the pictures where taken. So being the inquisitive person I am, I started aiming my camera at other things smaller things. Not that I have given up on the grand landscape.
Indeed most of my pictures continue to show larger vistas. But being the type of person that doesn't sit still well, I get outdoors in all sorts of weather. This includes cloudy grey days when the grand landscape is obscured in cloud. So these images were taken while on hikes in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, Northern California and Oregon. Two of the images were taken on (or near) the forest floor under a canopy of coastal redwood trees. And two of them were taken about a meter above ground as they were attached to growing bushes. While hiking I can frequently be found slightly off the trail kneeling or laying in the dirt as I find myself getting closer to something small close to the ground, usually in the form of a plant or fungi. Fungi are a critical part of our forest ecosystem. They slowly return the dead tree material to the earth, where the minerals can be used again by another generation of trees.
