Was out at my pheasant club the other day and took this shot of a friend. What do you think? Just wanted to capture him at the end of the hunt walking through the fields. Hunting in NJ, you are bound to get power lines or homes in pretty much any photo it seems lol So I knew I would have to get rid of it when I got home.
Technically the adjustments you made look well done. However, I wish you had left in the dog and the red building because they provide more of a 'story' to the image.
The idea behind the shot is a good one and adding the dog a nice addition to the storyline, but the tight horizontal crop cutting off barrel of the gun is like knowing a really good joke but not how to deliver it effectively because the "punchline" is missed.
Here the in terms of composition of the content and story line you've created a strong focal point and leading line / triangular shape in the ^ angle of the gun over the shoulder but then chopped it off arbitrarily with the bottom of the frame. A vertical crop like this showing the entire gun...
http://super.nova.org/EDITS/Hunter.jpg
or wider horizontal crop with the hunter cropped similarly near the waist with the entire gun showing would appeal to me more than the chopped off gun crop.
The power lines in the background don't bother me here because they convey the context of the location, but I wouldn't miss them if cropped out either. I find that bit of red barn in the upper left is a distraction because it pulls my eye off the focal point away from the center of the frame.
