[bbarny]

seems to be a bit bland to me, after spending some time working on it in photoshop what do you guys think.

[lifethrualens]

is it a montage, it dont look real???, but creative flash can do that

[bbarny]

No it's real. I think I might have over saturated it a tad but the previous print I made looked a bit washed out. I have sharpened and cloned a boat out also.

[Markulous]

Like the balance on the comp - nice timing!

Does look as if you've selected the foreground, boat and seagull, lightened them and darkened the foreground - think a lighter BG would work better

[ray]

Barny, it looks like a watercolour to me but i like it

[AQ]

Like the composition but it all looks a bit dark to me. Especially the sky which I am seeing as a bull bluish grey here at work and the boat also looks greyish not white as I assume it should be. There is a good picture in there though.

[Rob Barron]

The lighting is the problem here. You have said this is original and I have no reason to disbelieve you so the main areas that are conflicting are the sky and BG and the bird. The sky and BG looks very dark but the sun and shadow on the back of the bird show it was a bright and sunny day. You therefore need to bring the BG image right up to look as bright as it obviously was on the day you took it. You can get away with that here quite easily as there are no areas (other than the bird) that will end up burnt out. The mast of the yacht is white so will simply remain white as you lift the rest.

Give it a go, keeping an eye on the bird (I would select the bird and copy to a separate layer so that it remains unaffected when you lift the rest) to bring the two into balance. Then you've got a well-composed shot that will work nicely

Cheers,
Rob

[bbarny]

Thanks everyone for the input I appreciate it. I have taken on board the comments and this is the result. I selected the seagul and boat and inversed the selection then increased the brightness. I still think it could be inproved, what do you guys think.

[fionaB]

i love the composition of this i image. although its so big im having to scroll across the screen to see each part of it................. however i think the seperating between background and forground is just a little too much, the altered version is much much better!