Hi Chris,
I like the idea and the opportunity you recognized.
Here's my take. I'd consider taking more advantage of the background to add depth. What does blurring the background do to improve the image? It would be worthwhile considering making the near water at least very much in focus to better define a space in which she is. Currently, there are only two spaces, the foreground and then the blurred area!
However, the shot is what it i! There are still many ways one might extract an impactful final image to represent your sense of meditation that you experienced watch your friend. Remember that when you press the shutter release, you are not making a picture, just extracting some of the light. The ditribution of that light is only a bunch of voltages made by mathematics to a rough image file. There is no way that can equal what was in your head with a breeze blowing, the smell of the air and maybe the some noise from the trees moving or water lapping against the bank or even the fact that it's so peaceful there and not tense and pressured at work.
The hard part of photography is to somehow work your feelings into that picture so you are grabbed and it re-invokes some of the mood and ideas you had looking at her moment of peace and contemplation. At the very least, one has to control where the viewers eyes go.
- So, was this a shot in RAW?
- What happenned to the EXIF: always keep the EXIF and add your copyright info!!
- How did you process this shot?
I'd look to increasing the dimensionality of the wooden steps platform she is on.
Consider cropping off the top blurred water above her head. The eye does not need to go up there as there's nothing worth seeing up there. The direction is where she is looking but you have a portrait mode. It would be worth thinking about adding two widths of water from another image you might have taken just to see what power it might add.
However,
- just cropping off the top blur,
- adding a S cirve and sharpening to the wood,
- making very dark areas on your friend black and
- whatever lit slivers there are on the woman dimensional by an S curve
would make this picture pop.
Thanks for sharing!
Asher
