Cottage by the Winter Marsh — Herring Riverby
Bear_MusicComment by Bear_Music: I didn't expect this to get a ribbon, not flashy enough, but I am stunned that it finished 175th out 0f 221... It's one of my favorite pictures.
Even granted that it is subtle and quirkily composed, you'd think it could at least make the top 50%, sheesh...
Regarding the composition, I wanted more grass than sky, I wanted it to be unbalanced that way. Ditto the tight crop on the right. It's the relationship of cottage to marsh, structure to environment, that i was after. Yes, smoke would have been nice, but it's a summer cottage; nobody lives there in the winter.
Looking at it afterwards (and I mean RIGHT after I shot it) I realized I needed a a little more sky (not much) but the "moment of light" for this shot only lasted like 45 seconds or a minute, I ran out and drove over here in a brief interlude of weak sunlight near sundown on a bleak day in the midst of a bleak week near the end of the challenge period.
The right edge of this image, BTW, is VERY precisely selected, it's by no means an accidental thing. look at the window mullions and the fence slats; give it a hair more on the right, and you get a new slat; a hair less, and you lose a mullion. Move far enough over to end it after the next slat in the fence, and you've got a mullion problem and an "almost complete" window, which I definitely did not want. I wanted this cottage to bleed off "edgily", it affects its relationship with the landscape. The same shot with the whole cottage, had I taken it, would have been an utterly different thing. Had I gone back enough to include the door, as one person suggested, it would have been an utterly different thing.
I particularly like the way you can see the view THROUGH the window.
Robt.
Message edited by author 2013-12-08 12:18:05. 
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