Letter from silent heaven

Let me begin by saying what a wonderful piece this really is. From the daily deviation page, the thumbnail looks a little bit less than satisfactory, and now I'm so pleased that I took the time to look. I'll start with the front of the photo and move backward.

The first thing I noticed with the large view of the photo was the horse in the foreground. The second thing I noticed was the lack of a second horse on the bare spot on the ground. It looks like there should be one, but for some odd reason, there just isn't. The obvious use of a 2D figure to create a 3D object (by a third party, clearly, <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title=" (Smile)" /> ) makes you think a little more and notice one more detail every time you look at the photo. The last thing I noticed about the horse, but perhaps the most striking, is that it appears to be staring straight into the camera lens. It adds to the eerie feeling of the scene.

The angle at which the photo was taken, with the fence protruding from the side, rather than the corner, and being just another object in the scene, instead of the main "enclosure," if you will, plays with the subconscious of the viewer, as if saying, "I am here, but only partially. I will not protect you if you do not give yourself to me completely."

The color difference between the two swingsets being the only immediately noticeable difference seems as if they're sort of... Encroaching on the person standing with this scene, or, in the photo sense, the viewer. The tarnished top bar and the slightly twisted metals on the toys give the illusion of being well used and loved, but abandoned. The playset in the back of the photo is perfect exactly how it is--unused, and fading away like it will never come back.

The detail of the tree in the center of the photo draws attention to the dimension of the scene, and the fact that those details fade away the farther back the tree is from the camera adds that sense of fog, like one could hardly see enough to travel 100 feet without falling on his own two feet. That brings it to the archetypes of things that obstruct vision, like fog, or a dense forest, which, it is implied, this one may be.

To finish up, the color, grain, and touching of the photo gives it a certain surety of is happening. The thought that comes to mind from this overall scene (I will confess, at the risk of sounding childish) is the scene in the beginning of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when Harry has just left the Dursley house and is walking, with his trunk, unaware that the Knight Bus is about to come, and the dog, the "omen," is beginning to come out of the shadows. It is dusk, the merry-go-round is spinning, and the swings are empty and creaking.

It was obvious to me what this photo entailed, even before I saw that you had put it in the "Horror and Macabre" category. Overall, this piece is very well done, and I congratulate you on the daily deviation. <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title=" (Smile)" />