I'm First to Post Here :)

I took this a couple of years ago with my P & S Sony Mavica

This picture has a lot going for it Kathy, the colour is excellent and the feeling of joy that Shelby is having comes across very well.

I would crop the top down to the top of the coloured squares that make up the back of the pool and also crop the side to get rid of that yellow patch up in the top right hand corner.

If Shelbys eyes had been open it would be an exceptional image but as it is it is still a very good effort. :)

Thanks Stewart for your suggestion and comments. Is this what you had in mind ? I added a small border to make the image look finished.

The crop looks excellent Kathy.

I'm not so sure about the border as it blends with all the blue round the pic and it looks washed out next to the colour of the water.

A 10 pixel black outline first would seperate them.

Ok, which one ??

For me it is the second one. :)

Thanks Stewart !!

I'll second the second one... :-)

The black blue black ends up competing with the image - you CAN get away with it, but it normally needs to be a very thin line of the contrasting colour, and the black on the outside needs to be quite thick... not for this image, but something like 20 pixels of black all round, 5 of a nice gold tone, then 30-35 of black on the outside edge looks quite smart and formal for the right picture...

The competition between the blue is increased, I think, because it's patterned/textured - I often cheat with the edge lining on an image, by sampling a tone that's already in there - especially if I want to highlight something - if you have a busy scene of boats, and only one has a red hull, and you use THAT red as the trim on your frame, guess what EVERYONE spots in that image... :-)

Cheers,
Stuart