Fishing Boat - First attempt

[bpretorius]

I am quite new to the whole post production thing - having had Photoshop for a while I have not used it for much more than the Camera Raw plug in and cropping.

As I am brushing up on some tutorials I decided to revisit some photos that I took more than 5 years ago when I still only had a compact camera - I think it was a Canon Powerhot S3??

So I would like your opinion on the post processing below:

1) I did some gaussian blur on the water
2) dodge and burn on the water to bring out the darker patches
3) high pass filter on the jetty, boat and plank
4) hdr toning on the overall image (my first attempt at this)

Let me know your thoughts - does it work or is it too much? Is there anything you would have done differently or would suggest?

BEFORE:



AFTER:

[Weird Girl]

I actually think this is a very good job at a black and white conversion which is what you were doing, correct? That is why the before is so yellow? Whatever the reason, I really like the final product- might be slightly improved with a tiny less blur on the water and the boat on more of a "third" but that's the only thing I can see...