Here's one of my recent ones...critique away!

"Lonely Hat"
This was taken at the San Juan Capistrano Mission in California. I was exploring the beautiful mission grounds and stumbled upon this very rustic looking hat perched on this wooden fence. Somehow, it just looked like it "fit in" with the place, so I decided to take some macros of it. Some tourists looked at me strangely as they watched me take pictures of the hat instead of the lush botanical displays and fountains...whatever--that's what photographers do (take pictures of things less noticed). Let me know what you think...good, bad, ugly. I edited in Lightroom 5 for saturation, WB, sharpness, contrast, and a little noise reduction.
ISO100
50mm
f4
1/250sec

I like the first better. I prefer the contrast.

The picture itself is good, however, I feel the composition could have been better.

The POI ( front of the hat ) is in shadow and this makes the composition a bit strange IMO. Possibly had you had the sun behind you this would have helped. With this you could try dodging the shadow and add a darker vignette to push the attention into the centre of the image.