Thanks, Keith. I may go prowling there again.

There are drawings by Mondrian of where he gradually distils the natural tree forms into blocks, horizontals and vertical lines: I think there’s that sense here. you could easily take a ruler and make an interesting grid-like pattern in this scene. It’s as if your picked out those city lines and grids in the natural world. Mondrian was looking for something spiritual, the essence of things as we interact with them. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons that pushes us to go out photographing the world.

An interesting interplay of shapes and shadows, helped by the snowy background, John.

An interesting observation, Steve. It may be that the schools of painting that have developed since the invention of photography are distinguished chiefly by the degree to which they're prepared to abstract an essence of some sort -- the neo-plasticists all the way, the cubists not so far, for example. A Canadian painter, York Wilson, travelled the complete length of the route over his career. Over the years he emphasized the geometric aspects of his subjects more and more until he ended up doing pure geometric art. This page has a fair sample of his work from different periods:
www.artnet.com/artists/ronald-york-wilson/3

There are certainly photographs that demonstrate that this is in fact one of the reasons photographers take photographs. A related reason would be to demonstrate the complexity of the real world, a complexity we often overlook. Either way the photographer is saying there is more here than you think.

There is a site, www.photoquotes.com, which has compiled a large collection of quotations by well-known photographers about photography. Many say that photography teaches you to see.

So thanks for the idea. So much professional criticism of photography seems to be based on not looking at the photograph that real ideas are highly refreshing.