so my friends dont think this is mine

[emmerloo86]

i have just gotten into photography and was at the beach the other day and happened to get this shot completely by luck! just out of curiosity, how do you prove that something is yours and not just something you stole from a windows background... cause thats what all my friends are telling me it looks like i did........... what do i do?
i have left a copy of the shot below, and i would love it if someone could tell me what to do better. i like the shot, but im the only one being hard on me. everyone else loves it or doesnt believe its mine....

[JohnT]

Watermark it so you can show that is your signature within the photo.

[NgaiHill]

How have you shown it to your friends? As a print? On the computer? If on the EXIF data embedded in the picture - that will show it was taken on your camera - or at least a camera identical as yours, and it will show time and date it was taken.
BTW, its a nice shot, minimilist but the water looks very inviting & makes me want to look around the corner to see what else is on the beach.

[dbevisjr]

First thing I would do is get some new friends. Then look in the EXIF data. As NgaiHill points out it should contain the camera model that the image was captured with. It may also contain other usefull information to prove to the folks you refer to as your friends that you did take the photo. I would look for the date information. That would be most useful. If the date is just a few days ago it couldn't be a windows image. You didn't mention what camera you use or what software you are using but the exif data might be easy to find with the image open in your imaging program. If not then set up a flickr account and upload the image to flickr. Then when you view the image on flickr click on the "Actions" box at the top left of your image, in the dropdown menu click on "View EXIF info". Hope this helps. (Your friends are probably OK and just giving you a hard time. That's OK as long as they eventually say good job on the photo. So don't dump your friends on my recommendation, I was just giving you a hard time.)

[NicoleScraps]

Originally Posted by dbevisjr

First thing I would do is get some new friends.

Ditto that!

[sk66]

Exif...but they are just really giving you "sideways compliments".....

As for improving, I think I would just crop a little of the brownish foreground water out, or edit the color in post..
Nice shot!

[IABoomer]

I like sk66's suggestion about cropping out the bottom some. It would also push the horizon off the center more. Speaking of the horizon, I'd straighten it out. It's running a little uphill from left to right.