The Rosson House was built in 1895, at a cost of $7,525. It is a perfectly preserved example of Victorian architecture. Rather than photograph the entire house, which can be seen as a documentary image on pbase in Seowfun’s gallery by clicking on the thumbnail at the bottom of this caption, I chose to photograph only the far left corner of the second floor. I made my image at 2:30 in the afternoon, throwing much of my image into shadow. It is the interplay of light and shadow that makes this image into a bit of time travel. I immediately noticed its kinship with the harsh play of light and shadow on the second story of Edward Hopper’s famous painting “House by the Railroad” ( http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/hopper/landscapes/railroad/ ) The key to expression in this image is the reflection of the illuminated brickwork within the window at upper center. We see the incongruity of a window within a window here, an illusion that makes the house seem nearly transparent. I abstract the scene down to its essence by spot metering on the yellow roof tile, the brightest area in the picture. This causes the shadows to darken, and the light areas to become deeply saturated with the colors of the 1890s. I carefully compose the image around the geometry of the brick walls, windows, small balcony fence, and the narrow yellow porch roof. Less is more here – if we are to travel back into another time, we must do it in our imaginations, and the more abstract the image becomes, the more the imagination can work.