This image here is one I am wanting to translate into a painting. To be honest, the picture was a compromise coming upon viewing probably about 1000 images. I had wanted to render into oil a sense. Here is the poem that inspired this sense. 

The Snow Man

Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land 

Full of the same wind 

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow, 

And, nothing himself, beholds 

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

After looking through many images, this is the only one that I feel begins to encapsulate something of the poem.  I had an image in mind, but this I didn't find, so I settled for the last three lines.

"For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is."

The painting is not meant to be interesting or dramatic in any way.  I didn't enjoy adorning it with so many gestures, which I believe leads to the failure of capturing a sense of quietude. What is it to look and be filled with the sense of nothing that comes in a moment of pondering. What am I to behold the inherent beauty coming with no sound nor any indication that there is anything there at all?  It is a muted sense of grandeur in a mundane moment made grand in the subjective self's sense of being small and being there upon being as included in part of a larger design. Are there gestures in paint that could bring a meditative moment to life? Or is it better unadorned with fancy tricks. Is it possible to paint a feeling?  This is the first time I disagree with the instructor, here the intent being to make it interesting. If the object is nothingness, what restraint must one exercise to capture something entirely elusive, yet perfectly depicted in words? Personally, the poem especially the last few lines confirm subjective experiences I have had in regards to looking outward into undefined distance, so close and so far. The moment, though technically uninteresting, holds a far greater gift. I think the sentiment of being nothing beholding nothing that is somehow still something, and it is something greater revealed only in a moment in reflection, this is well worth dedicating a painting to. I think grandeur can be contained in the minute. That's where the uninteresting photograph becomes an interesting subject.

I think I am not mistaken that in the photograph is the beginning of a reflection upon this. To try to adorn it with bold gestures or to embolden the visual with the introduction of particulars would take away from the original intent. In the past, I had not known what the end result ought to be and so go along with the expertise of the instructor. This time, somewhat different, I have the image in mind to be something in particular, and so set the reference frame to a moment of inspiration which I drew from the poem.