Columns in the Snow at Long Hill Gardens

Columns in the Snow at Long Hill Gardens
Originally uploaded by randubnick

Here's another photograph from one more winter walk at Long Hill Gardens, here in Beverly, MA. Scattered throughout the gardens, which was once the Sedgwick estate, are architectural structures: columns, balustrades, pagodas, gates. I often pass by these two free-standing columns during my walks at Long Hill Gardens. But on this particular walk (late afternoon on New Year's Day), I was struck by the way the columns looked against the snow and the backdrop of the trees, so I took a picture. (The inexplicable presence of the columns lends a kind of surreal quality to the scene, like in a Magritte painting or in Last Year at Marienbad!) Tonight I cropped the original photo to get this composition. I also used the retouching tool in iPhoto to get rid of a label on one of the trees.