Thanks, fw, but my shot is certainly not as accomplished as you somehow managing to get your July 1 post in between two June 30 posts! I've never seen that happen before in a greenspun forum.(posted 8689 days ago)Interesting though about the retouched image. I took a little off the top, left, and right, and a little more off the bottom to remove some of the foreground. It may be the foreground in the original that added some strength to your perception of the image. After Tom brought the several bright whispers to my attention, they became obvious distractions to me, but not before Tom spoke. The biggest improvement for me was the boy's shoe. I didn't even see it, but it definitely competed with the much more important element in the image area -- the boy's face. I've learned from Uncle Ansel about sometimes darkening the surrounding areas of the print. This I did a little with the bottom part. As a side note, the original is a straight print, no dodge or burn!