One of the delights of this kind of mountain settlement, visually, is in the sparseness of the dwellings; the church is not surrounded by buildings, but tracks flow from farmstead to farmstead, following the curve of the hill, showing us its shape, providing lines for the eye to follow. The other main compositional aspect here is the two diagonal flows: one with the hill and the light, from the top-left to bottom-right; and the opposite one flowing up from the houses and church, up through the line of trees, and out through the top-right corner. I have always liked the ability of photography to create 'total worlds' of beauty; by excluding the unwanted, to create the impression that the world presented might, perhaps, continue like this for ever. Antithesis to the rushing-foreground-to-background style of photography so prevalent at the moment, a moderate telephoto crop in on a small slice of world – especially if further unified by an overarching colour theme, as here – perfectly creates a frozen droplet of beauty.
