Essential?

What IS Essential?

I am a strong believer in finding what is the essential subject of a photograph and then eliminating everything you don't need.

However, it ain't always that easy to know what is essential. The image on the right is just a tighter crop of the image on the left.

I spent 45 minutes here and took almost 300 images. And yet I'm still not sure I "got it". I see in these images a clear hint of what got me energized, but maybe I have not yet been able to clarify things and bring out the essence of the scene.