I took the above picture last week in the woods. The useful thing about macro photography is that it teaches you to spot subjects that transform under a focused gaze. It wasn’t until I was steadying the camera that I noticed the tiny spiral shell latched onto one of the rose hips. It immediately made the shot more interesting to me, and what I wanted to showcase in the image changed. I no longer wanted to capture rose hips on an autumn morning, I was endeavouring to illustrate a more abstract idea. While the shell is hardly unnatural, its position and perfection makes it seem like a surreal addition. It…