The empty space in the foreground hurts the overall consistency of the hay bales. It would strengthen the image to crop that dead space off.

great work, lovely tones and great DOF

Too dark and bland in black and white, with too much dead empty space at the top.

yeah, you're right about the black and white. I'm going to keep the empty space though because I think it adds to the vast open space of rural areas.

I like the composition, but find the colour a little unnatural .

well i dunno about others but what empty space i see... i like it.. and in a contest like farm we do get empty space

When the sky is so flat without any points of interest like clouds etc then the 'empty space' doesn't do much to enhance the overall image, so I'd agree with Mossy and crop just above the tree with a little 'breathing' space just above it.

Okay, well obviously this photo is not soothing enough to the eye and something seems to be off, but I thought "empty space" meant basically nothing there. If there were clouds to look at, it wouldn't be EMPTY space.

beautiful!!!