I've had that mace forever now and I've always wanted to do something with it. Killing someone seemed like the logical choice! Haha! Anyway, this is shot down on the stones of a creek not to far from my house. The blood is official stage blood (whatever that means) I got with a kit of stage makeup. We used all of it for multiple shots. No more blood for me. :(
I'm not expecting this to do well at all. I'll be surprised if it gets over a 5. But I hope to learn from the comments. We'll see now, won't we?
Even though advanced editing is allowed on this one, I'm not advanced enough to do any advanced editing. So...
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I need to start with a disclaimer: the photo doesn't convey a lot of meaning to me, and I don't know what your intention was so can't comment on how well your creative decisions contributed to the overall goal.
My first impression of this photo is that it looks staged. That isn't necessarily bad if that's the intent, but it brings up a lot of questions: Why is there so much blood on the balls and very little on the spikes? (That flail obviously didn't draw the blood!) Why is blood smeared on the back of the hand? What is the connection between the chain in his hand and the chain on the flail? And where is the "blood on the cross" from the title? Now, it's great for photos to raise questions, but to be effective those questions need to be answerable either from the photo itself or by an allusion to something else. And I wasn't able to find any answers, thus making this photo unsatisfying.
Although lacking emotionally, the composition works well technically. There is a clear focal point (the upper ball), with a lot of lines that point to it (the curved line of the upper hand, the thumb, the chain on the right, etc.). It is well balanced and there are some nice diagonal lines that lend some excitement. Lighting is harsh, but not overly so, and probably suitable for the subject. The blood helps tone down the strong reflections in the balls, although they are still somewhat distracting.
To me, the photo lacks contrast, is a bit dark, and too soft. You used curves and unsharp mask, so this might be intentional, although I don't understand the reasons. But maybe you tried and discovered that increasing the brightness and contrast makes the saturated colors downright garish. The color saturation is fine as the photo is now, but some saturation adjustment is needed along with curves to keep the right balance. It's often easiest to go back an forth between hue/saturation and curves, making small tweaks to each until further changes don't improve the photo. And reducing the size generally reduces sharpness as well; try doing unsharp mask after image size instead of before to have better control over the final product.
Actually, I think this photo would work a lot better in black and white, where you can really boost the contrast and take full advantage of the strong lighting. A completely different alternative would be a low key treatment, where the overall darkness might better convey the mood you are trying to create. But that would require a reshoot; harsh light doesn't work well for low key. So that's really an option to keep in mind for future work, not something to do with this photo.
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