Phone Alone.

[John 2]

A group of people together but each in his/her own bubble.

This is a heavy crop of an ISO 1000 exposure, hence it's relatively noisy but I grabbed it rather than trying to get closer and losing the shot.

[Shadowman]

Nicely observed and captured.

[Manfred M]

Brilliant John. I like the way the light and shadow areas on the ground tie together the people on the two separate benches.

Something I have always found interesting is how technology has made the world so much smaller when we can communicate with people all around the world pretty well instantaneously, but the pay the price of no longer communicating with people immediately around us.

[rpcrowe]

Great comment on today's world... Love the image but, I might think about cropping out the partial red bench and person far image left...

[Tom Barry]

Alone in a crowd. Well seen and done.

[Donald]

Well seen.

I agree with Richard regarding the crop. Also, I think this is an example of an image in which colour is a distraction. To focus attention on the subject of the work, how about showing it as a B & W image?

[John 2]

Thanks all for the comments. It's unfortunate that the bench and individuals on the left are there but cropping more from that side would IMHO mean the people on the second bench would be too close to the edge, particularly since they are looking out of the frame. The image works in mono though Donald and the offending figures on the top left are less of a problem. Didn't occur to me.

[Manfred M]

It's nice to see both versions John, and while both work I find that I always ask myself whether the added abstraction / simplification of converting to B&W outweighs the value that colour adds to the image. In my work, I find that my initial view on B&W versus colour is correct at least 99% of the time.

Here I find that your initial instinct was correct and the lack of colour does not work as well.