The Old Schoolhouse (circa 1869)
by
Bear_MusicComment: I've made a special point of making longer, in-depth comments on milestone voting images, and this shot happens to mark my 300,000th vote at DPC... so here goes!
My first impression is that I like the toning of the image a lot. It has an HDR feel to it, bringing out detail in the dark areas, particularly where the desks leave shadows. I used to be pretty much against HDR treatments of photos because a lot of them were heavily overdone, but this is a good example of how it can be used to enhance a shot while still retaining photographic integrity. (And again, I'm just assuming this is HDR.)
At first I thought the walls were dirty on the right hand side, but I'm guessing that's simply a result of shadowing from the desks, probably made more obvious by HDR, too.
I love the sharpness of the shot, from front to back.
Minor nitpicks...
There's not really a singular defined subject here, as a place for the eye to come to a rest. The desks kinda act as leading lines, though, drawing me through the shot to the front of the classroom.
I might have liked this a little better had the shot used an even wider view, grabbing just a tad more of the desks in the middle left and right bottom of the shot (or if they weren't in the shot, amputated part way).
And my only other nitpick would be the visible cars outside the window. I'm not sure what the timeframe of this setting would be (I'm assuming this is an old school house frozen in time as a museum of sorts), but I like to imagine it without modern transportation :) I'm trying to count stars on the flags to come up with a timeframe... the one on the right looks like it has 36 stars, which would put this setting in the 1860s...?
Ha... I just noticed the "circa 1869" in the title, so I guess that answers that :)
Anyway... it looks like a cool place to visit, and I like the shot a lot... it's a 7 from me.
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