Underexposed throwaway to 3rd place
Paul Cooper
I had a deliberately under exposed (to prevent sun burnout) an early evening shot which was a long way from competition ready.
The initial work required moving the mother and child to their own layer and cropping to further enhance the dramatic sky. Some think con-trails should not be in a photo, others, including me, are not so worried as long as it adds interest.
I then selected the highlights, inverted the mask and adjusted the exposure.
Next I selected the shadows and applied nearly 60% clipping to the curves window. This brought up the sand and added some silver highlights to the sea.
I moved Mother to the left 1/3rd and up the beach a little to show the scale of the sky. She needed some feet which was a couple of strokes from a thin black brush.
Hex code fa873d represents a warm, orange-yellow colour that falls within the spectrum of colours typically seen during a sunset. This was a solid fill top layer merged throughout the image simply by moving the mode from 'Normal" to "Colour". No editing, no masking, simples!
The sun was just over exposed so, to avoid the common Judges criticism I used some light cloud-cloning with a large, soft brush and the fill knocked down to 10% - just enough to avoid "That's blown out" but not enough to be noticeable.
I was lucky enough to turn an image that should have hit the bin into one that came 3rd