Moments:Urban, "Ice Cream Querencia"

Thanks for viewing and for any critique or comment you care to offer.

JR

effective perspective, John, with all of the crowd's backs of heads except for the man left and the woman right who frame the couple, and i think draw our attention to the smiling couple as does the perfect light shed on them against the man's black shirt and the woman's black shirt and the black seats. also making them stand out is the dark fg where they sit against the lighted background; the crowd are all each involved in their own quiet worlds, while this couple is animated and enjoying a laugh and a treat. great capture of them looking at their treats and smiling together; makes them seem very connected. and the smidge of artificial treatment and gloss makes this a great advertisement for any object in the picture. a real grabber. congrats... ;-} dp

Thanks Donna.
I've been opposed to a lot of what I call EPS(excessive photoshop). Lately I've been trying to temper that view and use treatments like the one in this shot in a way that I think appropriate. That is, in photos where I think it is effective to communicate emotional aspects of the images. In my opinion, that's the power of this kind of stuff in advertising, it triggers an emotional response. I'm exploring whether it can effectively do the same appropriately in non-advertising images and still maintain integrity. You picked up on what I wanted a lot of the post to do, the crop, the lighting etc. It remains to be seen if the sharpening, desaturation, contrast manipulation etc. is valid or whether it is trite.

Thanks, again-

JR