I tried for the longest time to figure out what his left foot was resting on! The best aspect for me was his garb -- rather elegant by today's standards for the task at hand. Technically, since he's indoors (mostly) shouldn't his hat be off?
What on earth is that on the shop's roof? Three things come to mind: a very old peeled banana, a grilled sausage past its prime, and-- I dare not mention the third. Is it a sad commentary on my mindset that the third was the first to come to mind?
They're all good, but this is my favorite, with the looming bee second. This shot does a good job of meeting your stated objectives. It's particularly good at capturing the intensity of the player who just hit the ball -- very intense! That the ball is midflight is a serendipitous plus.
There's a nice correlation of thoughts and ironies at work here between "Godsmack", theatre, "down on his luck"
A personal aside. The greatest concert I ever attended was at The Roundhouse in 1974. Maria Farantouri singing mainly Theodarakis protest songs. She blew the place apart.
Lynne, thank you for all your comments. I agree that it looks better in B&W too.
As for the roof ornament - yes, it's a sausage.
And the table tennis shot - I waited for ages to try and get the ball in flight with fast shutter speed to try and freeze it. That was my third or fourth attempt.
When I went back to the color image after I had posted the comment, I realized why the B&W is better: the splotches of red in the color image draw too much attention to themselves, distracting from the actual subject of the photo -- not that the color image is bad, the B&W is just better.
I think the BW version works better, a lot better. Clever composition! If you ask why I didn’t pick it at first, I would say that it’s more of a metaphorical shot than a visual play. It shows I wasn’t careful enough in examining your post.