I don't want to dispell any illusions, but there's a point I'd like to illustrate with this image. This lovely waterfall is what it is, but it's not out in the remote wilds of some mountainous state, as it might imply. Instead, it's in a rural area of northeast Ohio, a state that's not widely known for its scenic wonders. In fact, there is a road bridge immediately above this image, which illustrates my point: photography involves visual editing -- a conscious choice of what you include in an image and what you leave out, because it doesn't help tell the story you want to tell. Photography -- landscape photography in particular -- is highly subjective. What is included in the photograph is really there (unless you play Photoshop tricks, which I don't), but it's been composed and isolated from what's beyond the limits of the frame in order to tell a certain story without distractions or conflicting elements. So what you see should not be thought of as "objective reality," just because it's a photograph; it is a subjective representation of the photographer's vision, and it should be appreciated as such. A photograph is, in a sense, a window into the photographer's mind and heart, in much the same way that a painting or drawing is -- and no less significant as a work of art.