I don`t know a lot about composing a picture - and i know nothing about HCB, except for his "decisive moment".
But i was following this discussion and had some ideas, before it was discovered where this picture was taken and i think some of my ideas may be interesting, still.
When looking at this picture the first time i considered it a rather unimportant and missed shot, as the foreground is blurred and nothing important or special is in the picture. But at a second glance i saw quite some elements of composition making this picture more interesting.
When taking a picture you get a two-dimensional print - unless you use a stereoscopic camera. So the print does not have any depth, but you can try to create an illusion of depth - for example by placing several objects or plains behind each other. If you place several people behind each other, in a way you still can see each person, you can see on the print that the object photographed must have had depth - while the print of course doesn`t.
On this picture here is see several plains behind each other. First would be the wire-fence, second the line of big trees and third plain the line of trees in the background. If you realize these planes, the pictures gets more "depth".
The second thing adding to depth are lines creating a vanishing point. The dark wall on the left and the smaller wire fence on the right, both leading to a vanishing point pretty much in the center of the picture also show that the object was three-dimensional - creating even more an illusion of depth on a two-dimensional picture.
Then there is the blurred foreground. When this picture was taken sky was cloudy, but as there is snow on the landscape brightness was rather high. It should have been possible to select an f-stop to get everything sharp - at least HCB could have putten focus more on the foreground, accepting some blur on infinity. But aparrently he didn`t, maybe because he wanted to add some realism to the picture:
If you stand close to a wire fence - closer than on this picture - look through the fence and focus on an object further away, the wire fence would become blurred to your own eyes. This is what we are used to by every day life - and this can add some realism to a picture, because sharpness looks like we see it with our own eyes.
The longer i look at this picture the more three-dimensional and realistic it gets to me, though its just a two-dimensional and B/W picture.
And there is quite some structure in it, the planes, the wall+fence creating a vanishing point - if there wasn`t that chaotic nature in it, trees, bushes etc., this would make a very tidy, structurized, centralized etc. picture.
But there is this chaotic nature in it, counteracting the structural elements - there is contrast in this picture. And i`d say the contrast is pretty even, i see about as much structure as chaos.
This then reminded me of jazz.
In a documentary about jazz a famous musician, i think it was a trumpet player, explained what jazz is about - in an interview from the 60s or 50s. He did explain that jazz has certain rules, i cannot remember what rules exactly, but within these rules you are free. You don`t have to stick to the melody but you can vary - and you also don`t neccesarily have to stick to the rhythm. There is some structure, but there also is chaos - just like in this picture.
This may be too far-fetched, but who knows, maybe HCB also had jazz in his mind when he took this picture. In the 60s for example there was psychedelic rock and then people also tried to take psychedelic pictures - in `44 jazz still was big, rock`n roll wasn`t invented yet so maybe... but maybe HCB didn`t like jazz.
I am not a jazz fan, there are some tunes i like, but some are just too chaotic for me - therefore i can understand why there are people not liking this picture. You either like the tune or you don`t. I don`t consider this picture groundbreaking, but pretty interesting - at a second glance.
Also it is the opposite of a decisive moment. There is no fast moving object or person, no fraction of a second to catch, it doesn`t matter if you take this picture now or in five minutes. Also when trying to catch a decisive moment you usually don`t compose a lot. Whether the picture does create an illusion of depth etc. doesn`t matter much - it is important that the man jumping over the puddle has both feet in the air.
Therefore this picture is the opposite of what you would expect from HCB (as far as i know HCB and i only know his decisive moment), so maybe he also put this picture into the book to give the audience what they don`t expect. To break the pattern, so to say.
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