Shooting nature details and abstracts is absolutely the most stimulating photographic challenge for me. Often the detail image I end up with bears no relation to the visual element which originally caught my attention. That’s what makes the process so intriguing: as I explore the subject, I usually discover something I hadn't seen at first and which probably would have escaped me if I'd not been exploring the subject. Not surprisingly, that gives me a whole new understanding and appreciation. Once I've figured out the basic concept of the image, the other challenge is to decide where to put the edges of the frame... what to include, what to cut out. That process demands a firm resolve to resist the temptation to widen the view. At times, I give in to that temptation.
When I've gotten all I can from the subject and have begun to unplug my concentration, I feel almost as if I am coming out of some kind of trance. Only then do I realize just how absorbed I was, and how much I had discovered about the subject. That may explain why my detail images are the ones I most enjoy looking at, over and over.