On vacation on the island of Captiva I had the lucky discovery of this sand castle built on the beach just outside the Mucky Duck Restaurant. A few children were milling about playing around the castle or adding a few touches to it while waiting with their parents to be called inside for dinner at the restaurant. I snapped a few pictures and not only caught an excellent shot of this boy playing by the castle but also one with my youngest adding a finishing touch.
Also taken at the same location, The Finishing Touch
Steps:
Cropped from original
Resized
Sharpen for web
Saturation Enhancement
Clarify
Gamma Correction RGB levels
UPDATE: My thanks to Konador for the first comment during the Challenge Voting that clued me in on two areas on why it was not doing as well as it could be. I am such a stickler for strong composition , so I should have known better to crop out more of the empty 'negative' space of the ground plane for the challenge entry. Also it seems I am still trying to find the perfect balance of just how much brightness/contrast and whether the image is too light or too dark - not every monitor is the same.
Statistics
Place: 245 out of 684 Avg (all users): 5.8326 Avg (commenters): 7.6667 Avg (participants): 5.7772 Avg (non-participants): 6.0652 Views since voting: 1348 Views during voting: 316 Votes: 239 Comments: 13 Favorites: 0
Very fitting for a silhouette shot. Nice image. Great sky! I think the image could probably afford a little tighter framing, losing some of the foreground and lowering the subject further from the centerline.
Composition: 5 - Good, but too much black at the bottom imo.
Technical: 5 - Nice exposure on the sky but there is actually some detail in the silhouette which I find distracting. Not enough to see it properly, but enough to stop it looking like a proper silhouette. Brightness/Contrast in PS would help make it darker, and also make the sky more vibrant.
Creativity: 6 - I like how the castle is almost as tall as him! :)
Appeal: 5 - Not an awful lot here to hold my interest for long, sorry.
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