Here's a thought or two.
You saw something that caught your eye, and you photographed it. Good. But the viewers of your image don't have the benefit of what you saw before you took the image, we can only see what you included in the image. And what you included in the image doesn't fully convey what you saw. So let's back up a bit.
For something to be missing, is has to be seen to be missing, ie, a pattern is established and the missing component is obvious. In this case, we see clearly the missing spike, but we see only one other plate. To create a pattern, you would need at least one other plate to be visible to show that this is an exception. Figuring out how much to include to create that pattern is something that you have to do by trying different framings and see which one works best. The height, closeness or distance to the subject, etc. are part of the compositional framing. In general, diagonals work better than horizontal (or vertical) straight lines.
Once you have your prime subject, you also have to determine how much contribution the foreground and background should make to the image. In general, it should contribute to the main subject and not compete with it. So the choice of what to include, what to exclude, how much sharpness or blur to use, all become part of the artistic decision to direct acttention to your prime subject. In this context, that partly out-of-focus blade of grass near the missing spike is clearly a distraction.
Then there is the matter of exposure - it's ok to have blown highlights if there is no detail in the highlights that needs to be seen, but it also creates blocks of brightness that will pull the viewer's eyes, and perhaps make them miss the main subject. So part of the trick of presenting the image is to make the main subject sufficiently well defined that the eye goes there first (we tend to look at sharply defined stuff before we look at bright blobs). Definition can also be improved by lighting - but this is easier to do in a studio setting than in the field.
In summary, you saw something that caught your eye, and you had an idea of how to covey what you saw to other viewers. Timor has given you some good advice. The challenge is to learn to slow down and to analyze a scene to see what elements work, which need to be emphasized, and which should be eliminated. At least in my own case, putting the camera on a tripod forces me to examine the scene more thoroughly, and verify whether I got the framing, DOF, and exposure right. It also allows me to check the margins/edges of the image and see whether the background/foreground is creating distracting elements. And usually, I take a number of shots, in various orientations, and from different perspectives, because I have seen too often something at home that I didn't see in the field.
Finally, the advice that Lew Lorton has given in another thread applies here - I have it as part of my signature. Three sentences, but a lifetime of photographic experience distilled.
