A mother and daughter out for a morning walk on a wet beach are the subjects of this picture. If I had only framed the lower corner of the image, I would have had enough context to convey this idea. The mother stepping into the water, the child in the pink rain jacket skipping over the puddle, work well together as subject and context. But I also added vast stretches of empty beach and fog shrouded rocks to the image to provide additional context – enough to express the vast scope of the walk they are undertaking and the difficulties it may present. The additional context also gives scale incongruity to this image – the tiny figures are dwarfed by the vast sandscape they appear to be entering.
By adding all of this context, I also add sensory input to this image – the fog mutes what we see, and at the same time sharpens the other senses, making us want to listen for the crash of the waves, and try at the same time to catch the scent of the sea.

(A year and a half after posting this image, I received a query from a potential picture buyer. She asked me if I would be willing to provide this image to the publisher of a therapeutic book for use as a cover shot on the sensitive subject of "child loss." I could not accept this request because these people are not models, I do not know who they are, and I do not get signed model releases for my images. My purpose is to teach with my images. Selling them for publication would be a secondary consideration. Yet this gracious query certainly changed how I saw this image. It adds an entirely different context and in doing so, changes its meaning. I can now imagine that stream of water in the lower left hand corner of the image, over which the child boldly steps, as becoming a symbolic boundary between life and death itself. However moving that thought might be, I did not think it would be fair to the people who appear in the image for us any to alter the context in this manner without their concurrence -- still another reason why I could not sell it, no matter how worthy the cause may be. It would not be ethical for me to do so. The query offers all of us a thought provoking look at the power of the context in which an image is used.)