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This photo flew under my radar for years. I just didn't consider it one of my best until compiling this portfolio. My criteria for "best" —composition, presence, and evocativeness— (which I describe in greater detail in the '...' section of this site) made me look at it more closely.

I took this photo from my seventh floor apartment window. That's a very tall tree on the left, and a very large 'cherry-picker' crane. The height of my point of view is just about the minimum necessary to create a feeling of height in a photograph made with a wide/normal lens. The overhang of tree branches helps too. As does the small tree bottom-right.

This photo is very well composed: the placement of details around the edges of the photo (ladders, buckets, traffic cone); the crane basket set parallel to the road and sidewalk; the basket placed on two of the photo's 'thirds'; the base of the crane on another. It's so perfect it looks staged. What's more, these elements combine with the gesture of the rightmost painter to tell a story, "We forgot the paint!" It's like a Jeff Wall tableau.

But it's not. It's just my building being painted.

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19.03