. . .I am unfortunately far from having the ability to tell a 2 years old, be it my daughter, where she must stand...
Having 4 kids, 17 grandkids, and, so far, 9 great-grandkids, Bernard, I'd be the last person in the world to suggest you try to tell a two-year-old where to stand, but I
would suggest that you might have swung your camera a bit to the left. You don't really need the corner of the walkway in the picture and the kid is looking toward camera left. It's a minor point, but it's the kind of thing I sometimes lecture about: the need to internalize composition. Here's how I put it in "On Street Photography":
". . .there are two things you need to learn to do: First, you need to practice composition to the point where it becomes intuitive. You don't have time to line up all those elements of geometry with, say, the 'rule of thirds.' You have to see it whole in your viewfinder without stopping to analyze.
"But in many cases to wait for your conscious mind to register both the facts and the geometry is to miss the picture. So, the second thing you need to do is learn not to rely on your conscious mind, but to rely on your unconscious: to react instinctively. There simply isn't time to think about it. In the end, to do good street photography you need to practice and practice and practice. You need to become so familiar with your camera that you don't have to think about it, any more than you have to think about shifting gears when you're driving a stick-shift car, and you have to be able to frame and shoot a properly composed picture without thinking about it -- with your unconscious making the decision."
In that essay I was talking specifically about street photography, but the same principles apply to any snapshooting, provided you're after something more than a tourist snapshot. Not thinking about your equipment is paramount, and considering the gratuitous information you added regarding camera and lens, I'm forced to conclude you do think about equipment.
