Chimney

A house was once here, and people, who sat around this fireplace. Maybe they cooked on it. Maybe there was a kettle on a rail above the flames. It's all gone now: the house and the complicated push and pull of relationships which once filled it. I often stop to look at derelict houses, like this one in the Maniototo. They are symbols of mortality and the impermanence of all things, made all the more poignant by the stillness of the sky and the great open land.

But the sky is never still. And the land too is in process. All things pass. All things.

Photo: Nikon D7100, Nikkor 18-200 @ 18mm; 1/1600, f10, iso400. I wanted to emphasise the land and the sky as much as the old chimney, so I included a lot of them, and to give a sense of stillness, put the horizon line smack in the middle. The chimney is on a thirds intersection to make it the emotional focus. There is some barrel distortion - this lens does this at the wide end of its range - which I was tempted to correct, but in the end left it as it was, as it gives a kind of suggestion of the curvature of the earth.

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