Table with a View

Table with a View
Balboa Park, San Diego, CA
November, 2010

This tall structure is a monument, as well as an open air stone oven and chimney.  Someone...I'm assuming either an artist or a prankster...placed a small metal table up on top, and two chairs on the tops of stone supports on each side.  The second chair on this side is below and to the right, off camera, atop another support.  These chairs and the table were so incongruous, and so interesting, that I had to find a way to photograph them.  I liked the mixed up, puzzling story, the contrast between the smooth white metal and the dark rough stone, and the clean lines.

Composing a photograph, I find, is often as much about what you leave out of the frame as what you include.  In this case, there were several Eucalyptus trees nearby, and there were those other, lower chairs.  There was no point of view that included more than one chair, that didn't also include distracting and unbalancing greenery in parts of the background.  There were only a couple of points of view that let me put at least one chair and the table in the frame nicely.  This is the one I'm happiest with.