i like it, maybe a lasso on the boat to sharpen a tad to bring out wood detail and a bit more contrast, other than that, i like it and the mood

You could try the dodge and burn tools, at about 7% to lighten/darken midtones, give you more control than selecting area with lasso.

It is a nice try and good cloud formations can create striking images themselves without any other subject matter.

I personally prefer the original the unedited version, I think if you played around with curves and brigthness/contrast, you could have acheived a better effect without the halo around the trees.

Good effort though, keep it up and enjoy experimenting, it is the best way to improve and learn.

I see what you mean, you could have just cropped the third light out altogether to be honest, you still would have the same distance between what is the middle lamp to the edge and the foreground lamp to what is the middle lamp at the moment if you see what I mean, so everything would still look balanced, as to photoshop techniques, prctise is all it is check out some of my work, depending what version you are using you could have just selected a portion of sky and sea using the dotted line oblong shaped tool, copied it, so you would have a identical oblong shape of chosen part, then just moved it over to cover third lamp and then paste over, by the looks of it the graduation between dark sky and the sea is uniform so probably wouldn't need much blending, the cloneing tool can be awkward as you need to get in close by blowing image up and cloning as near to the part you wish to obliterate to get as near colour match as you can.

If you are confused, send me a message, unfortunately I am not a full member yet, redundancy, so watching pennies, so I can't upload a modification for you. Hope this helps and it hasn't confused you too much.

Nice idea for an image, couple of thoughts though, Very glary and bleached out, I understand what you were trying to achieve, maybe a few layers one for the mono image of the model with a bit more definition in the tones and curves of the models torso, one layer for the Ace of Diamonds this could then be treated seperate and contarst adjusted to make it really standout (at the moment you are losing clarity due to the harsh light/contrast), and similarly for the poker chip on another layer. I Think it would benefit from the chip being in colour as well, at the moment image looks flat and washed out.

Hope this is OK and haven't offended

Simon

I like this it is clear, would have liked the post to front on instead of at an angle an d maybe cropped a bit more of the top.