Chris, thanks for the constructive comments. I have a picture from the saturday after the weather had turned with the same students dealing with a force 5-6 wind. It has a sailing boat crewed by old sailors in the background which gave it a 'generations' feel that isn't present in this version. Unfortunately the sky is just solid white cloud with little detail and grey water, so although the composition is better, the colours don't work.
While the motor boat doesn't do much for the composition, it does form part of the story that these little guys are training in a working and busy port/marina and have to have their wits about them. They are not playing, which I think shows in their actions.
I agree there is too much sky, and originally I had cut the crane out but that affected the crop as it went below 1400 pixels so didn't scale well to 700. I will review the other images from the shoots to see if I can improve this entry.
This image is much better than it's thumbnail. I know it is the same, but it reads much better at this size. My two comments would be that ideally the white boat wouldn't be in the image, and that I would crop out some of the sky to focus the image more on the 5 young trainees. If you scroll the window to maybe 3/8 ths or centimeter above the crane (?) on the left I think that you will see what I mean.
