I like the shot very much, very relaxing and easy to look at and into.
I am not so sure about the black border though.
The border colour can have so much impact on the image and how we perceive its tones and contrast etc. In fact I'll bet, that if you showed the exact same image but with a white border, it would look much lighter and the shadows less dense. What colour/tone you use to frame a print is as often as much of an art form as the content of the image itself. According to Land's Retinex theory... well without getting too bogged down, here's an extract from Land's Retinex theory to explain what I mean:
Edwin Land, Ansel Adams, and the Retinex Theory
We can take another approach described by Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid Land instant photographic process. He theorized that the level of reflected light around an image modifies the appearance of that image. Placing a black and white print on a bright white wall will lower the perceived reflectance of the print; the white wall effectively overpowers our eyes. He estimated that black and white prints average twenty percent reflectance, that is they reflect approximately 20 percent of the light falling on them, and therefore the surrounding surfaces should also have twenty percent reflectance. In his opinion the actual color of the wall didn't matter, just as long as the reflectance was correct. His theory applies primarily to black and white, not color, images.
Ansel Adams, in his Autobiography, says this of Land's theory:
...This can be confirmed by looking at photographs in a lighted gallery through a black mailing tube, standing at a distance where the print area alone is observed and not the wall. The print is looked at through the tube for about ten seconds, then the tube is suddenly removed. The print will quickly drop in value, before the pupil of the eye is able to react. For many years I have been annoyed by the constant and monotonous use of white or near-white walls in museum displays of photography...
Dave
