The Grand Union Canal at Nether Heyford

Gorgeous capture! Stay well!

Admired in: www.ipernity.com/group/tolerance

Thank you, Roy, but you'd no doubt have said the same to John Constable - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cornfield#/media/File:Constable_-_The_Cornfield.jpg, and my eye for composition is more in tune with his than yours, especially when the picture is viewed from a distance.

Roy says the distance would need to be at least a furlong.

He would no doubt have suggested a similar crop to "The Cornfield", but he's wrong. The sky and tree are as much a part of this picture as the boat and water, which on their own aren't very interesting, and even if they were (as Roy himself says of any subject) they would require a minimum of lead-in.

He's not wrong, just differently abled.

Like that, the boat is bang in the centre - not good.

You're too bound up with your petty rules. You need to be more visceral.

Like him? No thanks.

Not like him. Like me. But I think we've had this argument many times before.

Yes, we have, and we've agreed that "rules" are a misnomer, because they do not seek to prevent us from composing pictures as we like and in accordance with our own, individual way of perceiving. But they do serve as a guide to why (even when we are not consciously aware of the reason) certain arrangements are more pleasing and effective to us and to the majority who perceive in the way we do. It could be that other, different, "rules" could be helpful to those who perceive differently.

It just so happens that Constable's and my way of perceiving (evidently) were very similar.

But Constable had interesting clouds in his.

As have most of mine, this one included, even if the clouds in many of my other pictures were from elsewhere.

So which picture were these clouds cribbed from?

Nowhere. In this case they're 100% genuine. In many of the shots in which the sky has been digitally manipulated, only the overexposed areas within the (genuine) clouds are replaced, so they're semi-real.

Logical conversation is difficult when you alter your comments AFTER I've replied to them.
You had implied that the clouds in this photo were imported. But now you say they're not.

My original comment was ambiguous, and I've retrospectively clarified it. What I was saying was that, like my other pictures, it had interesting clouds in it - NOT that they were imported, which in this case they weren't. I should have phrased it better; sorry.

Not everyone appreciates interesting clouds. I included what I considered to be interesting clouds in my picture of Kidlington church. www.ipernity.com/doc/isisbridge/48406034

Someone asked to use it on the front cover of the village magazine, and I was horrified when I saw it, as they'd chopped the top off the spire and stuck a banner across the middle.

If the small boy in 'The Cornfield' drinking from the stream were to do that today, he'd end up with a very dire rear.

And thereby ruining it completely.

I know the feeling. The editor of "The E-type" magazine used this:- for the main picture in an article, but cut off the top and bottom, ruining the composition. He also didn't realise that the whole scene was bogus, showing the car in an Oxfordshire village (reversed left-to-right) where it had never been, and with a "reflection" created in PhotoShop which defies the laws of Physics.

I hope they paid you well. Or were you doing it for the glory?