Hey Brub, I gotta tell you that you did find an interesting subject matter there, but I find that your original image looks better than any of the cropped ones (no offense to anyone, just my opinion!), basically because it has a richness of color and detail. I think the tilt of the camera did take away from the image a bit and made it somewhat confusing, as it seemed to turn the chain into something of a miniature roller coaster track. I attached an image that's just your original image tilted and cropped to remove the blank corners that resulted from tilting it. I'm not sure if there's much you can do to change the original image in a meaningful way. At that angle it's rather difficult to tell what it is you're looking at, and eliminating more of the background just doesn't clarify it. Personally, I would have had the camera more to the right of the chain. This would have captured some of the side to give it more depth, hid that blank dark area in the corner, and brought more of that yellow sand into the image to add to the color detail. The shallow DOF suggested by punkclown might not be a bad idea, but the subject matter looks a bit flat from that position. If you can see more of the side and overall contour of the chain, or get the camera so close that the chain gradually blurs into the background, I think it would be a much more effective technique than just blurring the background out. Oh, and if you do get more pictures, definitely try turning your camera to take some portrait shots (as also suggested by punkclown). It's a great way of capturing a 3 dimensional feel for that kind of subject matter.