Bird on a Wire

SonyA700~Sony70-400G@400mm~ISO500~F7.1~1/1000sec~5-27-2009~Houston, Texas
CS4/Topaz Adjust3(small detail preset)/Topaz Clean2
Bird: House Finch Wire: barbed
comments and critique welcomed. regards~Bill

Hi Bill, Nice placement in the frame with the filter really popping the detail. The color and simple backround adds to the images strength...

Bill, Really nice details and composition. I actually like the barbed wire. I think the effect is subtle and well done.

I like the simplicity and colors. The wire is not at all distracting and the BG looks great.

Hi Bill, Nice image and effect.

One alternative to make it a little better, in my view, would be to crop the bottom to have the wire intersected the LRC of the image. I would also add canvas to the top and crop the left side to take the head out of the center and add more room to the top.

I added just a very slight increase in contrast, as well.

I like the wire, but I do not feel the lone barb to the left adds anything or subtracts from the image. It's also slightly OOF whereas the one under the bird is sharper focus.

However,

Your image ... your vision.

Very nice, Bill. I love the details and colors! The OOF wire on the left does bother me a bit, but not a big deal to me since the bird has such nice detail. Like the comp.

Thanks for the comments! Christopher: I thought about mentioning the OOF wire on the left when I posted the image, but I didn't want to influence any opinions about it. I thought about cloning from another photograph in the series I took, which actually would be quite easy. However my opinion, at the time, was that it added a sense of depth to the image. I'm not sure that thats the case now.
Mark: appreciate the time involved in your post, however I disagree with your compositional changes to the image. I am quite satisfied with the image compositionally. The OOF wire, as I've mentioned to Christopher, could be dealt with by cloning from an other image, but changing composition to solve that problem is a problem in itself.. regards~Bill