I wanted to display a couple images I like.

More importantly is the story behind it: While on my honeymoon last year my wife and I went to the zoo featured on Animal Planet's "The Littlest Zoo". The zoo itself was cool but it had one downfall, all the animals were behind chain linked fence which ruined most shots I could take.

My autofocus was continually focusing on the fence instead of the animal behind it so I had to switch over to manual focus. Also I leaned toward shooting almost wide open to blur the fence if if showed up in the photo.

This photo still shows the fence in it but it's minimal and still conveys the subject behind it. I would prefer that the fence not be there but it is so I tried to make it as subtle as possible. Another interesting thing I noticed about the fence is that it nearly illustrates the thirds rule on a diagonal slant.

In the photo below, I thought the subject is incorporating itself in my obstacle thus eliminating it from the photo. Instead of a lion behind a fence, it's now a lion scratching itself on a fence (which I thought was kind of cute :P).

I agree with your assessments. The fence is there in the first frame, it's in the way and it sucks and everyone knows it, but it's still a nice photo. Composition is not strong but it is a tight crop so it kind of works itself out and acquits itself on that count.

I like the second one better, and it sounds like you do too. The cat is at one with its surroundings and is making the best of it

How do you see making the composition in the first shot better. When you said something about it I then realized that his ear is cut off in the upper part of the frame.

Should I have gotten more of him in there(widened the shot), or pulled the shot to the right to get more of his body? Perhaps it would have been been better to get his front paws and front half of the body in the shot. This was a cub btw so I probably wouldn't have too hard to get more in.

I'd probably move it a bit to the right, but without knowing the whole scene it's hard to say. I would avoid chopping off his ear though, his whole head is a little tightly cropped, right in the center of the frame. I'd probably go looser or go even tighter.

I might could have even gone with a portrait orientation and gotten his whole head.