A Day in Hyde Park - 2

Remember the photograph of the bench by the path in my last post? I put it up on Flickr, and a friend of mine posted some feedback about it that made me think. He said, next time I should try and take the shot from a lower perspective. I haven't been back to Hyde Park to try it, but there were other pictures I took that day from a fairly low perspective (the grass stains haven't come off my denims yet), and guess what? They do look good. Like this one:

Or this one:

Wonder what it is about these low perspective shots that is so appealing. I mean, with animals and kids, it's obvious - you're eye to eye with them, and so are the people viewing your photograph. With these shots here, guess it's the sense of distance and height and space that get captured. People like looking at huge, open vistas - I know I certainly do. So if you can't get a shot looking out over the Pacific or the Sahara -just flop down and press that shutter!

Here's a couple more similar shots to end with - which one do you think works better, the vertical one or the horizontal one? A lot of snappers seem to swear by one or the other. Me, personally, I like to try both when in doubt.