John, You get an A+ in geometry. Looking at the original with the ski slope and sky, I see a pretty ordinary shot. Oh, but you used your excellent seeing skills to realize that the image is really about geometry and angles. Now we have an super effective intimate landscape - wonderful. Great seeing. I think I prefer the version with the black spots on the left simply because when the spots are removed you lost the texture. You can fix the texture using the frequency separation action in the TK9 plugin for Photoshop. Wonderful image! Here are two videos on using frequency separation if you are interested:
