The first pass I took when editing this photo I used a much tighter crop, focusing just on the poster in the center. That was what had initially caught my eye, the poster, and the way the woman's hands and head were framed by the windows across the street. The common wisdom is that composition is as much about what you leave out as what you include, hence the tight crop. Still, something about that framing didn't work quite right for me—it just seemed incomplete. When I added back most of the original image, it struck me that not only did I like the couch, the vases, and the additional buildings in the reflection, but I also liked including myself. I like the idea of making the photographer's relationship with the image explicit.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/4, shutter 1/60 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: cropped to 4x5; curves for highlight recovery and contrast.

Thoughts for improvement: The only thing that's bugging me about this one is the way that the neon sign's pull-cord intersects the wine glass on the poster.