The final stage is acceptanceby
vawendyComment by dahkota: for what its worth, I prefer this one. the tree is more ominous, seems larger, the boy already looks defeated (in the other he still has a chance). One thing to remember is often the absence of color forces the eye to look at the shapes - emotion comes out more powerfully is there is not a central color to work off of (as in this image, the color is inconsequential to its meaning).
If I was going to shoot this image again, I would get closer to the boys side, at a lower angle, to put the tree in an even more overwhelming position.
when working in black and white, it is often easier to control the shades of gray the colors will turn out to be by working in your channels palette rather than layers - do a layer adjustment on each individual channel while viewing that channel only. In the case of this image, I manipulated the reds to turn out white and darkened the blues so the sky would be more ominous and the string and the kite tail would show up lighter and more visible (I popped it into photoshop quickly).
I liked this image for the challenge because it was a metaphorical end - you didn't beat me over the head with a literal end. Alas, I didn't vote, but probably would have gotten at least a 7...
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