Jennifer
I’m not sure why this picture has so far attracted no response at all. We know from your previous posts and your web gallery that you are a serious photographer, with lots of interesting things to say, so I think we have to consider this picture seriously as well. All the technical stuff is fine, focus, DOF, exposure, and a very good B/W conversion. The house does not seem that unkempt to me (you should see my garden), but I assume that this is intended to be a study of the quotidian – the archetypal suburban front garden plot. It could easily be England, but the post-box tells me that it is not. The composition seems to break all the rules, being almost wilfully anti-pictorial, with all the strong motifs hard over on the right-hand side of the frame – but there is the counter-balancing flowering shrub on the left, which saves the day.
For some reason, I do like the shot. Nothing in it is in any way exceptional, but it seems to me that is exactly the point. Here I am, it says. This is the norm, the humdrum, the everyday. Each morning someone walks down that path, beside that fence, picks their mail up from the box, and catches the ‘bus to work. So we live out our lives, and each year the tree grows a little taller.
You may of course have intended none of this. But that’s how it seemed to me
John