The emotional dimension

The goal, so I am told, is to envision the final picture before you press the shutter release; it's called having 'artistic vision'. But, I have to admit, that for me the vision often comes later on. Take this picture for example; on the screen I had a technically good, full colour, picture but it just wasn't doing anything for me. My initial vision to capture the wind-swept emptiness, had come up short.

Then I decided to make it a black and white and darken the blue sky. Suddenly it ceased to be a picture about water and sky and became one about horizon-less tones of light and dark, and cloud shapes that reflected a wind swept tree. Finally split toned with hints of blue and yellow and it became a moody, surrealistic, landscape which echoed the, windswept, desolate feeling that I experienced that day at the Waipara River Mouth. 

Perhaps it has less to do with 'vision' and more to do with 'emotion'; recreating emotion is not just about capturing visual components but presenting them in a way that elicits the appropriate emotional response.

It seems to me to be a picture that needs a large canvas ...