Very pretty shot. Part of me agrees with your lessons learned but the other part of me says "hey - it's an expert editing challenge therefore a little of the unrealistic is perfectly acceptable." Looks sort of dreamy or maybe how one might remember (in their minds eye) a perfect day at the beach. I voted this 7.
Whether you got this mostly in-camera or mostly pp'ed it, it's a great shot IMO either way - but if you got this in-camera you must have died and went to heaven when you realized what you got. :) Lovely.
Nice title. To be honest it took me a while to find the meaning via google. I wonder if voters that didn't realise it was a maori word felt confused by the title?
I'm not voting on this but I do like the way the seagull and it's reflection focus my attention on the sea/horizon. The clouds feel a bit blown out for my liking.
Unfortunately the shadow holds this back. It isn't believable. It should probably pick up some of the water texture and be softer than it is. Perhaps running the ripple filter applied at a low setting would have helped. Also you probably want to skew the shadow somewhat to account for the angle. It shouldn't be of the same length and width of the bird that is way above it.
This does look quite nice. Only suggestion would be to touchup the Cyans to make it look like more a blue sky color, and add a touch of Saturation. If you're using photoshop, then that Hue/Saturation dialog is all you need. I tried it and it looked great.
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