In the wild, if you are rejected/abandoned by others of your kind, you are facing a death sentence.
So actually being left out, or being made to feel that way, is very basic and primal. And yes, I have had many nightmares featuring such a sense of rejection.
This shot was pure luck. One, it's a candid; two, it was taken halfway a good 50 metres (or more) across a busy park; and three, because the two girls are obviously related, and the body language just couldn't be better. It was only upon reviewing the shots that I realized what I had.
pp: RAW conversion, autolevels, crop, desat, minor cloning between fingers, brightness/contrast, resize, usm 2x, save for web
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Greetings from the Critique Club! :) (again - it seems to like me pulling out your images)
Good capture - as you say, the body language works perfectly. And an interesting, personal take on the challenge - I can certainly identify with that nightmare.
In this case, I think the original capture is good, but that different post-processing could have been used to convey the message more effectively. I don't normally like selective desats, and I do think here it works rather well, though I wonder if a more gradual, softened selective desat would have worked better (so, like, fading out the colour more and more as you move away from the girl). Also, the background seems to contravene the message of the shot, since there are these pretty white flowers, a big white tent etc. I'd be tempted to make liberal use of dodging/burning/vignetting/overlays/soft light layers to add a more contrasty/edgy/nightmarish feel to the surroundings. Also watch out for signs of oversharpening - it might have been intentional, but I find the sharpening halos quite distracting, there are other ways of increasing contrast that don't produce the same artefacts.
Anyway, as I said, I think it's a cool shot, but I'd like to see you spend some quality time in Photoshop with it, have a few more shots and see what you can do with it. (do post any interesting experimental results :) )
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