I took this picture during a trip to the beach with friends. Before hiking the rocks, I hung out around one of the caves, facing the ocean, crouching on one of the rocks to capture some oceanscapes. But families who didn't see me there - and some who did - kept walking right into my shot. This man and his sons saw me sitting there, so the man began to run. I thought it was very considerate, so I snapped a long exposure to remember what it feels like to have people be considerate, not annoyed, with public photography. I just like the foreground activity against the static background.
Editing: crop, levels, color balance, hue/saturation.
Statistics
Place: 255 out of 296 Avg (all users): 4.9754 Avg (commenters): 7.2500 Avg (participants): 4.9778 Avg (non-participants): 4.9688 Views since voting: 753 Views during voting: 222 Votes: 122 Comments: 6 Favorites: 0
Wow - the voters just didn't go for this did they?! I'm not surprised, but not for the reasons you may think. My first impression was 'what a great photo'. It avoids many of the established rules of capture and composition, and it definitely ignores the 'DPC Friendly' badge, but for me, the way you have done that strengthens it, rather than weakens it.
Technically: Its not that sharp (even in the background). That surprises me since at 1/25 with VR it probably should be, but that adds to the feel of the shot - of which more below. The Depth of Field is excellent, unsurprising at f22! The flat lighting is not appealing in the traditional sense, but again adds to the feel.
Artistically: The DPC voter spends about 5 seconds per photo while voting. You don't have a sunset, cute animal, strong colours or a baby, so most will say 'it looks flat' and move on. You do have flat colours, and a blown out sky, but that gives a real feel of a cold, wintery beach, on which people are still having fun. The group running out of, rather than into the shot also contradicts received wisdom, but (without reading your description) it made me see them running off to have more fun, or hot chocolate, somewhere else. This shot tells a story, and it's a good one.
In summary, if you keep taking shots like this, then you will likely never have a really high score here, but you will gain plenty of fans amongst the more artistic and thoughtful crowd, and I would suggest that that might be more important. Happy hunting!
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