Our assignment was to take two pictures. One with a focal point but with distracting elements and another one without distracting elements.
This first picture i took was of a sign near the red brick building. I took this picture because the sign seemed like a good subject for the simplification. As you can see, the sign is the focal point by being centered in the foreground but there are distracting elements behind it including people and trees.
In this second photo of the sign, I focused in on the sign more to take away any background distractions.