"Island of Hope, Island of Tears"

I went to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty in the teens of October on a school field trip. Knowing little of the reflection assignment for photography, I just decided to take a ton of different pictures for keepsakes. The now renovated area where immigrants were inspected, collected and/or rejected was the first place I went upon arriving on the island. I started snapping shots immediately. I had a picture already picked out that I wanted to use for a figurative reflection shot. But seeing this beautiful, massive window-door looked way different on the computer versus the tiny camera screen. The window-door itself is incredible and with a close-up, it could've easily been used for an architecture picture. But that wouldn't have been suffice for such an amazing view. I used the quote most commonly used by the monotone tour guides. The "Island of Hope, Island of Tears" because both parts of the quote fit the picture immensely. Looking at the window-door itself, you see the pattern on the window section, with x's aligned on each square. This represents the 'hope' part, because when immigrants thought of America, they thought of beauty. Then the reflection on the floor represents the 'tears' part. To me, it looks as if the door to America is in the middle and there are bars, as if one were trapped or imprisoned. It also looks like water, which is what tears are, which is what the immigrants would be sailing on if they didn't get citizenship to come into America. As far as editing, I turned the picture black and white and added a vignette.although it doesn't appear that I added a vignette because the picture was turned black and white. But if you look at all four corners, you can tell that there was manipulation because they are irregularly black/dark. I thought by making the outside more dark with hue/saturation, would bring out..or should I say bring in, the inner part of the picture, the focus point. And in my opinion, it turned out great!