Ed: I rather like the tension between the relatively restful foreground and the clouds, but your point is well taken. They remind me of the gathering storm in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. Though no peasants here, of course.
I did think that Heather, having opened herself to public criticism, deserved to have her basic viewpoint looked at sympathetically even if everyone looking at it would probably have framed it differently. Also, I admit, having printed professionally for a number of years, I'm more used to working on tone, contrast, on dodging and burning, than on deciding on other people's crops.
As for the "story" thing: I did not intend to be harsh. It simply bumps against one of my pet peeves. Our age is not only one where everything has to justify itself by and as narrative, but also as essentially private narrative. I thought a pastoral scene where no one component was the "subject" had enough of a public history in both painting and photography that asking for Heather to justify her basic vision as Wt21 did, was harsh and unjustified. I've been looking at Gainsborough and Constable landscapes, and one would often be hard pressed to isolate a "subject" from the whole, despite the frequent obligatory rustic, more part of nature than removed from it. In retrospect we relate the historical narrative of nostalgia for the countryside in a rapidly industrializing Britain, but that is a story made after the fact, even if its components were present at the time. The intent here was, clearly to me, to capture and create a pastorale, where, as I said above, the entire composed scene is the subject. It might tell a story, but it need not, I think.
As for photo manipulation: I agree with Ansel Adams that here are very, very few photos that cannot benefit from a little judicious dodging and burning. So we are in perfect accord on that one.
[/url] Leuchars by heather_t_vet, on Flickr[/IMG]
