The sun was low in Laxey, a small harbour town on the east coast of the Isle of Man. Night was only half an hour away and the direct sunlight was reaching only as far as the end of the harbour. The relative darkness of the foreground forces us to focus on the centre of the image where the sunlit beacons and far exposed harbour wall contrast with a darkening sky. The long vertical poles provide contrast in what would be otherwise considered a plain sky. These poles represent a crucial element in the composition of the image and also add an enigmatic quality to the scene. I expect that, to the fishermen and people who work in and around the harbour, there would be little enigma attached to the poignant elements of this image as their familiarity with them and their knowledge of the their functions would render them prosaic.
For these local cognoscenti we would be perceived as you might perceive a tourists in your own home town - you wonder at their fascination with your town hall clock or statue of some long forgotten dignitary. Familiarity can fog your vision and it's only when you are in an unfamiliar environment that you begin to see the intrinsic photogenic qualities of relatively ordinary places and objects.
The shadows of the original capture were a little dark so I brought back some that detail. I then increased the overall saturation and further increased that of the blues and cyans to the extent that, in the sunlit areas, the effect was bordering on artificial. The colour tint was achieved by applying the amber filter from the Digital Film Tools suite of photo filters. I then allowed some the greens of the original to show through and manually applied a hint of some of the blue sky in order to lessen the overpowering monotone effect of the filter.
I resisted the temptation to drop extra elements into this scene such as a boat in the foreground as I wanted to maintain the integrity of the image as a visual record of that moment and I also wanted to achieve the finished image by means of only parametric adjustments.