This woman has been bent by the heavy burdens she has carried on her back since youth. In the Naxi culture, women seem to perform the hardest and most demanding tasks. I saw her approaching from a distance and composed the structure of this image in my mind beforehand. I built the image around a diagonal drainage ditch that slashes through the center of the image. I saw how it linked to two horizontal elements – the shadow of the building in the background and the log at right. All I needed to complete the idea was a third horizontal element between them. The angle of the sun would provide just that as the woman stepped across the ditch and moved into the right hand side of my frame. Her shadow extends horizontally back towards the ditch, rhythmically repeating the other two horizontal elements flowing off of that diagonal ditch. I chose to organize my image in this way not because it looks nice, but because it helps the picture work more effectively as expression. This composition reinforces the central idea of this picture – a life of burden and obstacles. She had to move thorough the darkness of that shadow, cross a ditch in her way, and now must deal with that log. Her body appears to be weighed down with burdens, and her path has not been an easy one.