GOAL:
Give a sense of 'Waiting for the storm to clear' or 'the sun comes out after a storm.' The subject (boy) already has the perfect mood for this concept (downtrodden), so all that was left for me to do was to make the background look like a storm clearing.
What I did (using Paint Shop Pro 8):
-Cropped off top of the sky
-Duplicated layer
-Desaturated 100% of duplicate layer
-Erased the boy's shirt to bring back the red color
-Erased the right side of the sky to bring out the blue
-Increased saturation of the original layer to brighten the red of the shirt and the blue of the sky
-Unsharp mask of the duplicate layer (radius 75) for local contrast enhancement (did this twice)
-Cloned out the light poles and other miscellaneous poles/sticks
-Dodged the forested hill behind boy's head to allow for some separation of color between the boy's head and the trees
-Dodged a little of the boy himself to brighten him up a bit
-Adjusted color balance a little of the duplicate layer (added cyan to contrast with the red shirt)
-Merged layers
-Added borders