Learning to look smaller

The first year I photographed landscapes — wide frames, distant horizons, the kind of picture everyone makes of the Overberg. It was fine, but it wasn't mine.

Then I borrowed a macro lens for a weekend. I got on my knees in a patch of veld I had walked past a hundred times, and within an hour found eight species I had never noticed.

What changed was not the equipment. It was the speed. You read a landscape in a glance; a square metre of veld takes half an hour, and then you are still not finished.