These are insanely wonderful. WoW!

Thanks JohnnyDW!

Thanks JohnnyDW!

jpgto & DickC: thanks so much!!

Yes indeed :-) Why? Well, I could say "just cause" of course.. but..

Well... the whole image has a subtext that relates to power, in the end. The building exudes mass (which is a visual reference to "power". Think of enormous movie-style starships, or the building with a single windowed section in the movie "I Robot". The darkness adds drama.

So, the stage is set for a human.. to add scale and create a reason for the building's existence. I could have left off the mask, and ended up with a very unusual portrait of an individual, sure. Adding the mask, however, removes her (individual) personal connection to the building, and replaces her identity with a more iconic figure.

As an iconic figure, she has a balance of power with the building: the image title (Black Dress Leader Overlook) implies that she is the boss (or source of power) of whatever is going on in the massive edifice. The building is not a "personal" place.. it has no charm, whimsy, or traces of humanity ( the building I built it from is in a style of Modernist architecture called "Brutalism", in fact). As such, I thought the person in power there needed to not show her individual personality so much as show the fact that it was her place, her show: we the onlooker never get to know anything about her beyond that. Thus the mask: we see her "position" of power here, but not her personality (so much).

I found that having these thoughts gave me lots of specific ideas for what to do, vs just making something cool :-) Also adding the mask made it more likely I could post the image !

Thanks Jack!

Thanks again, hogs! (esp the latest: ReFlections, Jerryc41, photoply :-))

So far so good!

Thanks Vince! Fun to get some feedback.

Thanks Don!

Thanks Bev!

(i even knew to quote reply now)

Thanks everyone! It's fun to actually get some feedback, that's for sure!!

Phil. Nice comments, thanks for taking to time to scribe them up. Agreed re Linda's advice: I had no idea what was going on there. I imagine a 1920 pixel wide image would have been perfectly fine, vs my eventual 4444 pixel post created after I thought the 900 pixel preview was my 1920. ahh well live and learn.

Thanks very much for the encouragement on that point :-) Ok! in.

Thanks for this!

CJWilson. Thanks for your fine feedback!! I note you commented on my architectural side. As it might be of interest to some, here is the first major element of my image: the building :-)