Rusty pipeby
BikeRacerComment by photom: Hi Ara and *Greetings from the Critique Club *
Congratulations on your first challenge! You have received a good collection of valid comments that pretty much agree. So let's just summarize and add a bit of "reason why."
1) When a viewer looks at a picture - the initial tendency is to find the area of greatest contrast. That could take the form of a bright area next to a dark, or an area where two colors "clash" - that is they are opposites on a color wheel, or where there is an abrupt change in focus - all depending on the image. If that's where you want them to go, that's great. If not, something should be done to change it.
2) In your image, there are three areas of "contrast" - a) The white sky in the trees at the top and b) the red next to green area, and c) the yellow next to green area (which has both a color contrast and a focus change contrast.)
So - what the comments have said in summary it that you could remove two of these areas either by cropping, or by changing the camera angle, leaving just the one you want.
I'm not sure I agree with the comment that the DoF works really well. You shot this a f11, but since the yellow pipe subject is pretty much on the same plane - I think it may be better shot a bit more open, (say from f 2.8 - f 5.6). That would tend to make the background a bit more blurry - which I believe would be a help to the image.
All in all - a very nice entry - especially for a very first. Please keep sharing.
-Tom-
Photographer found comment helpful.