A spotted dolphin dances along the bottom of the ocean in the Bahamas. I was freediving when I noticed a dolphin feeding on the ocean floor some 30+ feet below. I dropped down to get the picture, but when the dolphin saw me, it turned to the side and started to show off, kicking up a trail of sand behind it.
Clone out the divers on the top left part of the photo and you are good to go!
If you cropped this vertically, give it some height back, like 100pixels to get the dolphin's eye near/on the rule of 3rds intersection for a more "balanced" composition.
Nice capture!
I didn't realize it, but I uploaded a slight crop that cut a little sand under the dolphin. But wow...a 2/5 stars? Nature's Best named it a semifinalist and put it on the cover of Alert Diver magazine. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Thank you for the advice, though.
2/5 means Needs Work as in needs some corrections ( could be the divers needing to go because they only act as a distraction ).
Every single photo usually has room for improvement/corrections, even world photography award winning photographs can and sometimes have slip-aways, small mistakes, etc.
2/5 in my book, when I receive such ratings, means re-work on the photo, fix what was mentioned if somebody mentioned something, and re-upload.
If the divers weren't there, I would've given it a 4 star rating.
If then you could do a better work at noise reduction on the water part ( hint: select the water, and apply heavy luminance noise reduction on it ) and "expand" the canvas to get the dolphin's eye aligned with the rule of 3rds intersection, it would get a 5 star ;)
Something like that to give you an impression of how I imagined it
http://i61.tinypic.com/11t66uf.jpg
Thanks for taking the time to show me what you meant. I admit, yours looks great! I have to admit I know very little about PS and how to use it. The extent of my processing is white balance and level adjust. When I used to do competitions, most required that very little work be done to it(I'm talking 2005-2007 mostly), so my underwater work is pretty straight forward. But your edits really make it pop...thanks!
What a moment!