Thank you. For the sake of my education, let me explain a little about how/why I chose to process the raven picture as I did. When I made that particular photo, I, and lots of other people were photographing in the area. The raven flew to that perch and gave us all the "eye" as if he were saying that it was OK for us to visit, but we needed to be gone when the sun went down. In my mind, I saw him as a guardian and titled the shot, "Raven Watch". It was shot in color, but I changed it to mono and liked it better. I chose to include the taller background to try to show the immensity of the environment. Yet, obviously, the raven is the subject. I do like your closer cropped version. But when you say the background was "distracting", what made it that way for you? Is it due to the shallow depth of field yielding a blurred background, or just too much empty space above the raven? I appreciate the feedback and it helps me greatly.
