Exercise Positioning a Point

3 photographs - Experiment with the different positions in which you can place a single point in a frame.

All three were taken at 200 ISO, 55mm, f8, 1/200 sec.

1. Point to the lower left.  The building in the field stands out anyway but the lines of the branches also take your eye to the point.  The landscape and the way it has been manipulated frame the building too - so the lines of the fence and hedge make you focus on the building. The two hedges behind the building do the same. The trees and bushes behind which I was standing make a good frame.  I will discuss what I hope to communicate at the end of this post.

2. Here the building is to the right and is balanced by another building peeking through the trees.  The frame is sliced into thirds by the vertical line of trees and bushes just to the left of the building.  Although the point has a counter balance in the other building I think this image is less successful than the first one.

3. The building is right in the middle of the image and gets lost.  There is nothing to balance it and although the line of the road sort of outlines the point (building) there is little that seems dynamic or interesting.  

The building I have photographed here belongs to a man who has had to endure some awful, quite harrowing events in his life.  Although surrounded by rugged hunters and farmers and despite growing up in this rural place he became extremely attached to his animals and refused to slaughter them after suffering two dreadful losses in quick succession.  There is little sentimentality here even for pet dogs so the man's position is unusual.  The man is very old now and quite unwell so has had to move away to be cared for and no longer visits this house - where he would sometimes have supper and his goats and chickens lived. The house is not entirely abandoned.  Someone in the village is using the land for grazing but the gate was always locked while we were visiting recently, so it seemed rather a sad place as the man used to come regularly and shout down my mother's drive sometimes bringing gifts of freshly picked zucchini or homemade wine.  He would talk to me very hopefully in Italian despite the fact I know very little Italian and seemed utterly unfazed by my total incomprehension.
The building is situated near the house my mother and her husband lived in when they took early retirement and escaped to the Italian countryside.  She too experienced a sudden and shocking loss after 5 years of living there when her husband died of an unexpected heart attack, aged 61 (only just).
There are many sad stories of early death and loss associated with the people of the nearby village, and not forgetting a local curiosity, a museum where people who were buried in the church crypt became mummified by a combination of a particular fungus and by being locked up in the cool are on show.  Literally - dead calcified bodies, some wearing the clothes they were buried in, displayed in glass boxes.  I wasn't allowed to take pictures when I went this time although perhaps that's a relief for me.  The whole area evokes thoughts of death and loss for me whenever I go  - but perhaps that is simply because I too have often been dealing with difficult emotions whilst there.
So the first picture, which is the one that I prefer as it may communicate something of what I was thinking about during my visit (but I am really not sure), is what I will briefly discuss.
The picture is at first glance a straightforward image of the beautiful Italian countryside in spring when life is regenerating.  It is extremely verdant and fecund looking.  Rebirth, growth, and a new beginning are all evident.  The trees in the foreground are beginning to show blossom although it is hard to detect.  The Judas trees are covered in their purple spring flowers which adds to the richness. It is interesting to me that the Judas trees are so evident  - it is relevant; betrayal and violence.  I have not cropped the photograph although there is an intrusive tree trunk to the right of the photograph.  It's only just in the frame.  The branches, (like the tentacles of death's hand) take up much of the foreground and point to the dying man's farm house. The trunk encroaches.  It's like you can't get rid of it, can't escape it.  But it does contribute to the framing.
For me the photograph looks at rebirth and spring but it is also explores death and dying and how you have to accept the cycle of nature, how you can't escape the nature of 'things'.  Just like you can't escape the tree in the foreground of the picture or it's tentacles.   The photo relates to the impending death of the man who owns the farm building; it relates to my own recent personal experience of loss, betrayal and acceptance of the nature of the people involved, the situation and the death of a marriage.  It relates to nature and humankind's struggle with it.