The title of this picture gives you verbal context that helps you understand its meaning. You now know what you are looking at. But if this image was displayed without a title, as so many images on pbase are, you would have to look at it as just an abstracted machine, a general comment on the passing of the industrial age. It no longer matters what the subject itself actually is. The cobwebs add enough context to tell us that whatever this machine may be, it no longer operates. It is a relic of another time. With the addition of my title, it also becomes a specific comment on the passing of the railroads that once were at the heart of industrial society. I am simultaneously adding and subtracting context here until I strike a balance to express the idea I want to convey, yet also still leave enough room for the imagination of the viewer to expand upon its meaning.