Hi!
Many times, we as photographers like a particular shot, partly because of the effort and skill it took to get it. There have been countless times when my wife will pick out a shot that was easy for me to take and pass over something much more difficult. So what I am saying here is that our own efforts become part of the criteria by which we judge a picture, instead of purely on the merits of the finished image itself.
I am afraid you misunderstood me or I misused the language again... To me it was more like having fun rather than hard work. I saw this scene and I wanted to get it right (at least framing-wise) with the camera... So I actually had fun.
This is one of those cases for me. The description you gave indicates the difficulty of getting the precise framing you did, but doesn't help me to appreciate the image any more.
Like I said, there were no difficulty, just learning my tools and having fun.
I like the concept you present here, but the lighting and angle of shot don't seem to help much. The light is very flat and presents little in the way of shadows and highlights. The angle of the shot is too high, seemingly taken from a comfortable standing position. It seems the shot could be much cooler if you had crouched down so that the repeating element could present a more dynamic and interesting view of the situation. Seems that more times than not, our eye level view is the least interesting.
As usual in such cases, I couldn't find another reasonable angle without allowing irrelevant objects to be in the frame. I did not want to play with aperture so that those irrelevant objects would become OOF. I just wanted those two very similar toys to be in the frame...
I do appreciate your honest opinion, Bruce. In fact, I would expect just that.
Fortunately, we often go to this park and normally I take my camera with me. So, I'll have my second and third chances of having fun ;-).
Thanks a lot! Boris
