This Bird Shot Needs Help

The spikes were put into place to detract birds, but they seem to make a nice place anyway.
I like the idea of this shot, but it seems dull to me. Any ideas?

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b7...ikesharper.jpg

Crop. The bird is the subject here, right? Zero in on him and maybe a bit more contrast on the feathers.
I also think an interesting title may help. Maybe something like: "Not To Be Denied"
It has possibilities, IMHO
Ed

I really like all of those leading lines along the top. The light, colors and sharpness are good here too. Definitely a crop would make this a more dynamic image but not so much that you lose those cool diagonals on the top.

A more colorful bird would have really helped. Maybe you can clone him out and drop in a goldfinch. :D

Leading lines or no leading lines, there's too much red and not enough bird. It needs a tighter crop or a longer lens. Depending on the lens used image quality is going to suffer from too tight a crop.

I think it looks good as is, but, if you want to make it appear more dramatic then maybe apply a soft straight gradient fill on a serperate, overlay/soft light layer, in the direction of the lines heading in from the top right and bottom left corners. The birds white feathers look like they ran into some highlight clipping, and appears to be some fringe or something, but hard to tell at this resolution. Hard to really pinpoint it but something funky about the white tones on the bird.
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I personally like the crop and composition as is.

I haven't seen those spike things, we have a few doves who've made homes in there. I imagine that the spikes at least prevent them from flying into that section of the roof, probably harder for a dove to do that than that little finch (wait, its a finch, right? I don't know my birds very well).

I have seen those before, I have heard them called pigeon spikes. As far as the picture I like Anbesols suggestions be a see something that resembles CA around the bird? It makes it look pasted in the shot. I would work o getting rid of that.

Thanks for all the comments.
Greg, it does look like it has been pasted in to me too. It wasn't, I think I may have oversharpened it.
A more colorful bird would have been great, I wished that myself but that is what was there.
Anbesol, I need more education in PS, but I will try to follow your directions.
I don't know that I want to crop it more. I wanted the environment to be important as well. But I shall try cropping as well.

You really have an eye for abstracts. The only thing I don't know about here (even the crop is okay by me) are the white specks on the hood.

You really have a think for shapes and angles, etc. i llike it, the only thing is the bird has to fight a lot to get the attention it deserves! (fight against all the nice shapes, angles and textures around it)

Thanks, dray. I actually took out a few other white stains(birdy doo-doo), then I sharpened the image, a little too much, I think, and those white specks appeared. I should have taken them out.

Liban, I think you hit the nail on the head, or, at least, stated the specific problem, that I was searching for. Thanks.

I guess I think backwards because I see this image as an abstract which happens to have a bird in it rather than a bird image. Therefore, I'd rather see more "abstract" and less "bird".

To me it doesn't work as just a bird shot for the following reasons: 1) the bird is not very special nor very clean, 2) angle is not very appealing, 3) the unnatural environment is not complimentary to the bird.

Having said that, the environment is very appealing for its abstractness. Thus the reason why I would want to see less bird and more environment.

It does seem that the bird is there more to 'spice up' the abstract background than anything. I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that, as you got what you could, but is it a great shot? Probably not, as the bird fades into the background and the DOF is a bit too shallow to capture the abstractness in a clean way (it's fading on the right), but it is interesting. I like the top structure also - the lines are powerful.

G