I think the beauty of an image goes far beyond its outward visual appearance alone. Yes, as photographers, we all love color, light, how it gets rendered on a calibrated display, on different papers, tonality, challenges of faithful and/or artistic rendering, forms, shapes and myriads of other visual aesthetics, at times got using special equipment like for example, a tilt-shift lens etc., They help us strengthen our visual semantics. I think these are all spices that add to the final dish. It is the dish that will be remembered for long and not the individual spices that tickle our taste buds for a moment. This is not to say technicalities are not important, they indeed are. They are means to an end, not an end in themself. I think creativity in such an expression is not necessarily a visual endeavor but an abstract one. Probably such images need to be placed on the shelf of philosophical literature in a library, instead of on a wall in a gallery (it does not hurt being there on a wall too!). I think such expressions are careful choices of a photographer with a message in mind, not stopping at the means during its delivery.
That said, I love the interaction between the Nature and a human mind in this case. The latter in fact is the mysterious product of the Nature itself. A mind which thinks trees and birds are important, not (probably) for trees and birds but for us the humans! What is the incentive Nature itself has to create us that way? I think, beyond a point meaning loses its meaning!
Thanks for sharing, Madhav.
