Photo of the Week: November 2, 2012

Editor's note: Welcome to  Yahoo! Travel Photo of the Week, chosen from the Flickr group created by our readers – you! Each week a professional photographer will select a photo that stands out from the crowd, and explain why they chose it. To have your own photo considered, join our Flickr group and start submitting your own photos!

If cameras shot bullets, rather than photos, there would be little left of the Nubble Lighthouse.  Built on a rocky island in Cape Neddick near York, Maine, in 1879, it has been the focal point of countless photographs and paintings.

On Sept. 27, a cold front had passed over nearby Cape Neddick and the wind was tearing, as it often does, at the lighthouse flag. Departing clouds revealed a jolly Harvest Moon (so named because being the first full moon after the autumnal equinox, farmers could work late in their fields) and an evening cerulean blue sky. And there to capture it was Y! Travel Flickr user Gary Fua, who's "HarvestMoon" is this week's Y! Travel Photo of the week.

There’s a parking lot, on the mainland, which is where Mr. Fua probably composed his image. We can tell he was using a telephoto lens by the way the distances are foreshortened  – flattened, but in a good way. Think of Grant Wood’s famous painting: American Gothic, the way the farmer, his wife and their house seem to have little or no distance between them: each of equal importance.

Likewise, in Mr. Fua’s distilled autumn evening image: We have the moon, clouds, the windblown flag, lighthouse, buildings and rocks; each giving us relevant information with the total being more than the sum of its parts. Simple, yet beautiful. The bright red “oil house” with its steeply pitched roof, the picket fence leading to the front entrance of the lighthouse keeper’s home… all elements that captivate the eye and provide it with a veritable maritime feast.

Alabama-based Michael Clemmer has been a photojournalist/travel photographer, landscape and golf course photographer for over four decades. Once a Senior Travel Photographer for Southern Living Magazine, he has also worked as an assignment photographer for the National Geographic Society and his photographs have been used in fine publications around the world. He currently specializes in golf landscape photography — visit his web site at michaelclemmer.com