Didn't Get Far (first C&C)

[DirtySocks85]

Well, I've had my camera for a little under a week now. I figured now is as good of time as any to see how my first C&C would go. This is one of my top 10 shots from the first 800 or so I've taken.

 

[dxqcanada]

Hmm, I can see why that caught your eye. Interesting.

The background (sewer grill, plant, bricks ...) kills the shot.
Did you shoot multiple frames of this subject at different viewpoints ?

 

[KenC]

^^^ Agree - partially desaturating the bricks might help, but better not to have them there.

 

[DirtySocks85]

Hmm, I can see why that caught your eye. Interesting.

The background (sewer grill, plant, bricks ...) kills the shot.
Did you shoot multiple frames of this subject at different viewpoints ?

I did, but unfortunately they're even worse when it comes to those background elements. I personally like the sewer grate, but I can see where the brick can be a bit distracting.

 

[The_Traveler]

Do you like this?
What's the difference?

 

[thetrue]

Lew does your software let you do that on an angle? Like instead of straight in from the side, can you bring it in from the top right corner?

 

[The_Traveler]

Here is a clip of the layers.
As you can see I used the vignette tool horizontally for the brightness and at an angle that matched the perspective for the lens blur

 

[DirtySocks85]

Do you like this?
What's the difference?

That is a good take on the shot. Thanks for taking the time to mess with it. I feel like the right wheel on the ground gets a bit lost, but I don't know if that's a wholly bad thing.

 

[The_Traveler]

I didn't tell you what I did because you won't be able to get to teh images in your mind's eye until you can recognize objectively how you would change an image.
Can you see what I did to your image and why?

 

[DirtySocks85]

From what I see we've got a lower brightness, increased contrast (?), and blur and vignetting on the right side (taking the focus off of the undesirable elements without getting rid of wanted elements in the foreground altogether). Anything important that I'm missing?

Taking your edit into consideration I went back and reprocessed my own. I'm not sure if I'm a huge fan of the blur, but I think that this is better than what I started with.