CJ made an interesting point yesterday:

"... intent doesn't need to happen at the time the shutter was tripped. In the same way that other visual arts can mature their final results over a period of time, I think photographers need to realise that the shutter moment is not the be all and end all."

Bearing this in mind I went through the 87 images in my processed folder – the ones I've converted from RAW files, but not been able to work up into something worth posting here – with a view to thinking them through again. I'm still pretty much sure that 86 of them have very little merit, but I said the same about this one when I first processed it; yet today I've put it in my portfolio. In this instance, the 2x1 crop is irrelevant; i.e. it's not that that makes the shot, rather it's that I saw something in this shot that I simply failed to see previously. All the more odd given that this was taken on Rhowan's birthday, and if you read the comments that accompany the entry I put up that day you'll see that I didn't think there was any merit to any of the shots that I took that day. This time though, it took me about ten minutes to post-process, and I love it, whereas last August I didn't think it was even worth opening in photoshop.

So, thanks CJ: I may well have missed this one had it not been for your comment.

Oh, and if you happen to check out the EXIF data below, don't even ask why I chose those particular settings as they make no sense to me either ;-)