Found this couple enjoying the day near the ocean. I had seen the writing on the wall as I walked by earlier but didn't pay attention to it until post processing the image.
shot RAW-jpg, edited jpg
duplicate layers
burn highlights wall and cars
dodge words on wall to bring out slightly
channel mixer convert to b/w
selective color adjustments to help blacken blacks
brightness and contrast adjust
crop to 640
USM
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I think intentional is the word of the day here. I know it's hard to do while being "in the moment" but getting together all of the elements in this picture would have been easy to do if you were thinking holistically while there.
Look, I know people hate when someone says "Hey, go back and do it again", but that's what you should have done. Once you notice the words on the wall in PP, you should have taken the scene in your mind again, and gone back to perfect the shot. Whether that means waiting for another couple, bringing on along, or asking one when you get there is up to you.
The guy on the right an the cars on the left need to go, as they pull your eyes away. The words became part of the meaning in your mind, but there's no way to make them fully realized until you re-shoot this.
I think my mantra lately has been: Make it yours. You didn't make this scene yours, you just showed us a moment. Moments are good, they are the substance of life. Distill the substance you have here into something that transcends self, position, and time and fully becomes art. Only shoot a myriad of things until you find one that grabs your senses, and then take it and re-take it until it is photographic and artistic perfection.
The cars on the left are a distraction. It also looks like you over-sharpened this, as evidenced by the halos around your subjects. The fact that we're looking at the subjects' backs also makes it difficult to connect with them.
perhaps there is more to this than i'm catching on, but your main subject doesn't seem nearly as interesting as the guy on the beach staring oddly at the bizarre objects. so i'm wondering why the perspective wasn't flipped and the message itself wasn't more completely visible.
Well what I love about your photo, I *really* love, and that is the title and it's inspiration (the graffiti). It fits the couple so well, their loosly held hands are the icing on the cake. As for the exposure itself, it looks like it was taken right around noon, and I think that made for a difficult exposure. I'm not crazy about the washed-out sky & etc. I also think I would like this better if cropped so that more of the right side of the photo was left out. Moving the window around on my monitor, it seems that this emphasizes the graffiti to greater advantage. 6
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