Gregorys, Thanks for the Gregorian comments. I think G1 may be correct in that background could have been less focused. I like to shoot at night, and this picture was shot about an hour and a half after sunset. I have gotten so used to f/8 or f/11 to compensate for my inability to focus well at night and long exposures (this was a 15-second exposure) that I didn't even think about doing static objects any other way. And in order to hide the light illuminating the house from the camera, the window wound up in the only place it could be. I will meekly defend the side of the house that G2 does not care for as adding dimensionality to the construct, but it is like the window, there was very little choice without cropping the horse's nose down to the margin, which I had considered, but rejected. But I do admit that if I could have placed the horse's nose differently, a straight solid-black silhouette against a yellow (somewhat out of focus) house would have made a good image. It would be a different image, but a good one. Thanks for your constructive suggestions. peace, rand ----- Original Messages ----- From: Gregory david Stempel Rand Flory: The Cowboys There are no "rules of silhouettes" in photography. This is indeed a silhouette. Comp is strong, color is subtle yet present without question and the directional lighting adding color to the figures is excellent. The background has nothing to do with the foreground and would have benefited with a lot less focus. At least the window on the right. On it's own, is interesting, but with the foreground, becomes a distraction. Where do we focus our attention? According to the title it's the foreground, so why am I looking at this window? From: Gregory Fraser Rand Flory (The Cowboys) - My learned friend Vlad once told me a silhouette is a dark thing in front of a RAT! THERE! SHOOT IT! Then he tripped and accidentaly shot his baby toe off. We still go to the dump to shoot rats but we don't talk about silhouettes so I don't know if the glint of bronze disqualifies your image or not. However, I really, really like the patches of color in the black figures. I also really like the bright yellow background, the lone, rectangular window and the blue sky. I don't like seeing the side of the building with the two windows. If the camera angle had been different so that all we saw was the cowboys with their bronze glints and a frame edge to frame edge bright yellow, parallel boards with that one sunlike window upper right. Or perhaps, once again I have consumed too much coffee.
