WP 1: Pre-Writing Assignment 1

This photo was taken on a farm in the Catskill Country of New York State around the time of World War II. The buildings shown in the photo are made of what appear to be just simple materials, wood and metal. These buildings would have been used to store things. The silo would have held some sort of grain and the barn would be used to store hay. From the looks of the picture, I would say that this farm primarily raised some sort of livestock. The abundance of pasture and grazing land in the background would lend itself to this idea. This could also mean that the smaller building on the right side of the picture is a chicken coup or something of that nature. As I looked more closely at the picture, I noticed further in the background what could be a field of some sort. This would make sense as even farms that would deal primarily with animals needed to feed those animals and the family.

I chose this picture for a couple of reasons. I am from a small farm based community myself so that drew me to this genre of photo. The thing that caught my eye about this photo was the wide open space that it shows. You can see for miles in the background. All the way to what appear to be the mountains. That seamlessly moves your attention to the wide open sky. There are only a few clouds in it and it is a soft blue. The varying hues of the grass also tell something. The brown patches in the foreground look like they may be well traveled by equipment and animals. The same could be true with those same spots in the background. When I began to analyze the hues, I noticed how the buildings look worn and weathered.

As I mentioned before, I am from a rural community so this picture is somewhat comforting to me. It looks like a calm summers day, maybe sometime in the morning. I put myself in the picture and I think it would be very quiet and serene. The smells, both good and bad, of the farm would be present, from feed to grass. There would be the sound of animals and possible that of workers tending to their chores. The people that lived here would be very hard working and a fair assumption could be made that a family with many children lived here. This would provide laborers for the farm.

This photograph is put together very well. It has tremendous depth. It gives the audience or viewers a real sense of what the land is like in upstate New York. It captures that "American" feeling from early in the 20th century of hard work. It uses a visual hierarchy to draw your eye from the buildings, through the pasture land, and back to where the mountains meet the sky. As with most landscape photographs, the entire picture is in focus. This means that there is no part of the picture that is singled out by the photographer. There is a reason for them to do that.