Requiem

As you probably know, there are three ways to create contrast. One is value, which is light and dark. Another is color, differences in color, warm, cold and complimentary colors are all ways to create contrast. Lastly, there's edges. Sharpness and blurriness are a way to create contrast and a point of focus.

Now, in your picture, there's only a small bit of value contrast. There's practically no color contrast as everything has the same kind of greenish-grey hue to it (except for the ribbon, but the ribbon is so dark that it's still not very eye-catchy) and you did use edges and blurriness, but not all in the right places and you could push them a little further. Since I personally find it much easier to explain my critique by painting over the image, that's what I did, but I will first explain to you exactly what I feel you should do to improve this image and gain the contrast you're looking for.

To start with, I would make the entire wolf lighter with a very close-to-white yellow overlay. This does make the wolf seem out of place in the dark environment, but this is easily changed by adding a bit of the same lighting to the rest of the picture. Imagine the sun to be slightly shining through the thick clouds here and there, creating small areas of light. By having done this, you will have got rid of the lack of interesting value in this picture. A bit of nitpicking; the paw could do with some darker shading on the inside.

Next we will tackle the lack of color difference. If you can't make value work enough, I would advise you to give the background a slightly different color than the foreground. This makes the difference between the two very obvious, and instantly changes the focus. In my paint-over, I used blue, but green or yellow also work very well. A warm color wouldn't work, as this doesn't suit the cold and lonely mood of the image. Another way to create contrast but also depth, is by making the background more vague than the foreground. The further away the object, whether that be a house, a tree or a mountain, the more it will fade into the color of the background, as can be seen quite well in this picture.

And finally the edges and blurriness. When using edges and blur effects, you have to keep in mind the strength of the blur and how far away or close you want certain elements to appear. With a picture like this, I wouldn't recommend using blur effects to create depth at all. Look up any kind of reference for mountains and you will find that they are sharp, no matter how far away they are in the picture. The 'natural' blur effect, which also applies to our own vision, only appears when something is really close to the eye in relation to the rest of the image. This can be seen very well in macro photography.

In your image, the crows are about as blurry as the mountain's edges, giving the impression that they are equally far away. The result is it looks like the crows are flying over the mountains, but this would mean that the crows are immensely huge. I would remove the blurriness of the crows entirely, keep them sharp, this will make them stand out from the mountains and push the latter even further into the background. The wolf could also do with some lighter edges, especially around the nose and it's backside. You don't have to make them extremely noticeable, but a small thin line could make a lot of difference (the paint-over makes this more clear than I could explain with words). Lastly, there's the edges on the building in the foreground. They are somewhat blurry, but it's a building (which would make me think of harsh stone edges) and it's not that much further away than the wolf compared to the mountains. Again these edges should be sharp and for a bit of extra contrast; make them lighter.

For the paint-over, click here.

As a final note to this wall of text, I'd like to say that regardless of the lack of contrast, this is an absolutely beautiful image. The wolf is rendered very realistically and for some reason I really like the way you painted that ribbon, it looks very soft and silky and the way it's moved by the wind looks very natural (another nitpick would be that the tree in the background is blown the other way, but we'll forget about that). I hope this critique hasn't been too much to read, and that it has been somewhat helpful to you!