Hi Dennis, i think On the whole, all 3 images have very similar composition, accept that the lamp post has been cut out of the image by the 3rd image.
I think compositional value wise, you followed the rule of thirds pretty well. How ever the displacement of the couple seems a little odd to me. allow me to show you visually what i mean.
The Rule of thirds is segmented by the red lines. Typically, alot of PGs tend to follow this rule to make subject placement more interesting. How ever this is not a hard and fast rule to follow by, so dun take my words for it.
You have managed to place ur intended subject "the girl" within the 1st third, However the couple was displaced out of the thirds which creates a sort of imbalanced image, as the last third on the right is now empty space or "meaningless".
Next, the title "Envy" doesnt fall through for me because, the girls had visually nothing to lead my eye from her towards the couple. The Blue line denotes the supposed direction in which your main subject should be directing the viewer's eyes towards, but no matter how i see it, i cannot find a line in which the viewer's attention should be moving towards the couple.
In Film making ( i feel in alot of ways applicable to photography) we practise the "triangle" method of placing our talents or subject(S). How this works is shown by the Purple triangle in the image.
How your couple got displaced greatly and created visually no link to your main subject was because the visible triangle formed by the subject was that shown by the purple triangle. As there was no "mental lines" to form an association between the subjects, the viewer tends to percieve it as "no connection"
In conclusion, i feel all it really really needed was for the "moment". In these image the moment wasn't quite there yet. The moment here refers to the "instantaneous gaze" where the main subject can be visually seen gazing upon the couple. If that was established, the perception would have been more "envious" as stated by your thread title. That instant gaze is powerful enough to form a triangle on its own to make sense to the composition regardless of the stone platform (that the girl is sitting on) trying to intercept the triangle formed by the gaze.
Hope this helps in some ways.
Sorry for being harsh..:embrass:
If ur not ok with the diagram or my post, let me know k? i remove it.
