Very cool image. Love the color. Love the faces.
I would be very tempted to crop out the boy's hand with the cell phone. For me, it is an eye-grabber, it takes away from the "naturalness" of the image, and that sliver of beach/ocean reduces the intimacy that is so important for this image. It would probably result in a non-standard crop for framing but for me it would be worth it.
I love this, cell phone and all! The action and the light are wonderful - especially the boy in the middle, looking up! I want to know how and what they are doing with the lantern(?)
Thanks for the comments, folks! I thought long and hard about cropping out the cell phone, but I somehow feel it's just part of the image. I love that today's gadget-obsessed kids had a moment of old fashioned wonder.
I shot this last March, on the way to dinner with my wife. We were in the car and spotted several glowing UFOs, which we followed all the way to the nearest beach. A large group of families was letting Chinese lanterns (aka fire lanterns aka sky lanterns) go, and I leaped out of the car with my camera and the fastest lens I had handy to document.
Had to crank it to ISO 5000 to get a hand-holdable shutter speed, which is why you see some obvious noise in the sky and a bit of softness in the skin from noise reduction.
