A 2:1 panoramic photograph of a lakeside house at peak autumn color, mirrored in still water, New Hampshire, available as a limited edition print in three sizes.
Artist's Story
On a private lake in eastern New Hampshire, a house sits at the edge of the water with its windows lit, a canoe turned over on the grass, and a bench and picnic table set back under the trees. The hardwoods behind it were at full color and the water had gone flat enough to hold all of it a second time.
I set up on the far bank and worked the frame while the surface stayed still.
What I notice about this scene is that it is full of people and contains none. Every object in it belongs to somebody. The canoe is upside down because someone put it there and will turn it over again. The bench faces the water because someone sits on it. And all of it is at rest, at the same time, with nothing underway. Most images ask you to work out what is happening or what is about to happen. That is a small, continuous effort, and it is easy to miss until it stops. Here there is nothing to resolve. Somebody lives here, and right now nothing is required of them.
Coming Home is that hour, when everything a person owns is put away and the lake is doing the only thing still happening.
The shore, about a fifth of the frame width. What looks like one canoe is two boats, a skiff nested under the hull. Click to view at full size.
About This Photograph
Photographed at a private lake in eastern New Hampshire, in autumn. This is a single frame image in color. The subject is a lakeside house among hardwoods at peak fall color, with an overturned canoe on the shore, a bench and picnic table under the trees, and the whole scene mirrored in still water. The northern hardwood forest of this region turns in a narrow window, usually the first two weeks of October, and the sugar maple, red maple, birch, and beech that make up most of it each turn at a slightly different time, which is why the canopy carries several colors at once rather than one. A reflection this complete depends on the surface going flat, which happens for short stretches on calm mornings and rarely lasts.
Coming Home
Steve Austinhttps://www.steveaustinphotography.com/
Location
A private lake, eastern New Hampshire
Subject
A lakeside house at peak autumn color, mirrored in still water
Capture
Single frame, autumn, from the far bank
Format
Photograph · horizontal panorama, 2:1
Sizes
40 × 20 in · 60 × 30 in · 80 × 40 in
Print Media
TruLife Acrylic · ChromaLuxe Metal · Baryta paper
Edition
Limited, 25 / 50 / 100 by presentation
What it Does in a Room
A photograph of somewhere somebody lives does something a wild landscape cannot. It makes a room feel occupied.
Two to one is the panoramic proportion that still holds a scene. Wider than that and a photograph becomes a band, read left to right like a sentence. Narrower and it reverts to being a picture on a wall. At two to one the frame is decisively horizontal without giving up height, so a composition can fill it rather than merely stretch across it. In a room it works with the architecture instead of against it. Most walls are built on horizontal lines, and a wide frame extends them, which is why this shape settles above a sofa, a credenza, a long console, or a headboard more comfortably than any other. It asks for a run of wall rather than height. Give it one and it makes the wall feel longer than it is.
Here the width is carrying a whole small world rather than a single form. The house sits at the left, the canopy runs the length of the frame, the shoreline crosses the middle, and everything above it is stated again below. That gives the eye somewhere to go and nothing it has to reach, which is why the piece settles a room rather than commanding one. There is also the matter of what is in it. This is a photograph of a place somebody lives, and hung in a place somebody lives it does something no wilderness picture does: it puts a house on the wall of a house, and the room reads as part of the same world rather than as a viewing platform for a different one.
The color is the strongest in the collection and it will lead a room. The canopy runs orange, gold, and deep red at full saturation, the water repeats all of it, and the only neutral in the frame is the gray of the house itself. It does not join a color scheme, it sets one. Warm white plaster, oak, walnut, linen, wool, and stone give it room to do that, and against any of them it becomes the color in the room. Against strong blues or greens the two will compete. One thing worth knowing: there is no bright passage anywhere in this photograph, nothing near white, so it reads richer and heavier on a wall than most color work and holds together in lower light rather than needing a lot of it. What it rewards most is a clear run of wall, since the composition is a full landscape rather than a single subject and it needs room to be read.
Not sure which size the room calls for, or want dimensions not listed here? Sizes beyond 80 × 40 are available on request and ship crated by freight. That conversation is welcome before an order is placed. Start that conversation and I will answer within one business day.
How small is too small for a photograph this wide?
At two to one, the Intimate size is forty inches across and twenty inches tall. That is a comfortable proportion, wide enough to read as a panorama but with enough height that it still behaves like a picture rather than a band. Of the panoramic families this is the one that holds up best at its smallest size, and a forty by twenty print will anchor a modest wall on its own. This photograph asks a little more than most, though, because it is a full scene rather than a single form. At twenty inches tall the house reads as a shape among trees, the canoe becomes a pale mark on the grass, and the picnic table is gone entirely. Those objects are the whole argument of the picture, and losing them turns it into a fall landscape. The Collected at sixty by thirty is where they come back. The Statement at eighty by forty is where the house has windows and the canoe has a hull. If you are weighing a size against a specific wall, choosing the right print size covers the measurements and the viewing distances in more detail.
What changes at the largest size?
The evidence of people, which is what the photograph is about. Some of it is simply more detail: the lattice under the deck rail, the run of the exterior stair, the brick of the chimney course by course, the window frames picked out in a different color from the siding. But there is one thing at the largest size that is not there at all at the smallest. What reads as a single overturned canoe on the grass is two boats, a canoe with a small skiff nested underneath it, and you can see the second hull through the gap between them. Nobody looking at a forty by twenty print will ever know that. At eighty by forty it is plain, and it tells you something the rest of the picture only implies: that more than one person uses this water, and that somebody stacked them there at the end of the season. None of it is dramatic, which is the point. At the largest size the picture stops being a lake in autumn and becomes somebody's particular house on somebody's particular afternoon. Why scale matters covers what happens perceptually when a landscape reaches the size where the eye has to travel across it.
What kind of room does this photograph suit?
Neutral rooms, and warm ones especially. This is the most saturated photograph in the collection. The canopy runs orange, gold, and deep red at full strength, the water states all of it again, and the only neutral anywhere is the gray of the house. It does not join a color scheme, it sets one. Warm white plaster, oak, walnut, linen, wool, and stone all give it room, and against those it becomes the color in the room and holds the space on its own. Against strong blues or greens the two will compete, since the color here is the subject rather than an accent. One thing that distinguishes it from most color work: there is no bright passage in it at all, nothing approaching white, so it reads rich and settled rather than luminous, and it holds up in lower light better than you would expect. What it rewards most is a clear run of wall and a placement people pass, since this is a whole scene and the eye wants to travel across it.
Every work ships insured and arrives with a signed certificate of authenticity.
If a piece is damaged in transit, the choice of replacement is always yours, and your edition number stays with you.
Production time runs 2 to 3 weeks for metal, 3 to 4 weeks for acrylic and paper, and 5 to 6 weeks for framed work.
Each print is made to order and takes its place in a numbered edition, so sales are final. Before you choose, I am glad to help: send a photo of your wall and I will show you this work in your room at true scale, at no charge. Start a conversation
Collector's Choice · TruLife ® Acrylic in Italian Frame
Collector Edition of 25· Lumachrome TruLife Acrylic · Handcrafted Italian Frame
TruLife acrylic in a handcrafted Italian frame with a linen liner chosen for the image. Frame series, finish, and liner are settled with you after the order, and production begins from there. The frame and liner add about fourteen inches to the finished dimensions, worth allowing for when planning placement.
Signature Acrylic Edition of 50· Lumachrome TruLife · Gallery Float Mount
Face-mounted to TruLife acrylic and floated approximately one inch from the wall, with no frame to mediate between the image and the room. UV-resistant, anti-reflective, and scratch-resistant, with a lifetime guarantee against fading.
Signature Metal Edition of 50· ChromaLuxe Print · Gallery Float Mount
Color infused into the aluminum panel itself, floated from the wall on a concealed system. Where acrylic produces luminosity, metal produces clarity. Exceptional fade resistance with no glazing or coating required.
Fine Art Edition of 100· Hahnemühle Baryta Fine Art Paper
Printed without acrylic, so light meets the paper surface directly. Highlights stay luminous, shadows keep their nuance, and the surface has a tactile quality the other presentations approach differently. The understated choice, and the traditional one.
Complimentary shipping within the continental United States. International collector shipping available upon request.
Still deciding
Designing for Stillness
A guide to choosing art for restorative spaces
How to tell whether an image will still hold you in a year, how scale changes what a photograph does in a room, and how to match a piece to the work a room actually performs. It cites the research it draws on, and it is equally clear about where that research stops. About ten minutes to read.
