Should it stay or go?

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bajadreamer

bajadreamer

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This is a shot of a Black-headed Grosbeak taken in SE Arizona, Ash Canyon Bird Reserve, in May of 2020. The plant is a "century plant" that produces these seed pods. Once the pods open and release the seeds, the stems and open pods remain upright for long periods, literally years. The birds love them as staging areas for feeding, etc. Does this pod add or detract from the image? I like the pose, the head angle and color of the male bird, but I have considered cloning out the pod. That would leave the picture pretty "naked"; literally "bird on a stick" image. Thoughts?
Black-headed Grosbeak-Ash-Canyon-1-lr-ai-ps.jpg
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Because its out of focus and its in the direction the bird is looking, I find it a distraction and therefore my preference is go. Also, I don't get any of the habitat significance from the image so I don't "see" any value in it.
 
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I agree a tight crop would work nicely.

FWIW, if you do want to maintain the full image, then yes I'd suggest getting rid of the out of focus plant. It's very easy to do that with the Patch Tool in PS. Here's a five minute edit using the patch tool on a duplicate layer with some Gaussian Blur and blending.

Black-headed Grosbeak-Ash-Canyon-1-lr-ai-ps-edit.jpg
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Thank you everyone for looking and suggestions. I agree that DR's version is better. I go back and forth about cropping. Usually I will try to err on the side of leaving too much in the image, at least my TIFF master copy. I will sometimes crop and then sharpen when I export to JPEG. I have a dedicated TV that I use to display my images on at home, so I try to stay with horizontal images as much as possible and even staying with 16:9 aspect if possible.
 
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