I thought something was different as I was scrolling through the thumbnails. I think this looks a lot better without the earlier distractions. I'm still learning how to work with cloning, but I've found that it's helpful to enlarge the photo a LOT, sometimes until I can see individual pixels. Here's one where I cloned out an entire background of trees, buildings, and a street scene. http://www.pbase.com/image/30204620 I'm not completely satisfied with the smoothness of my work, but I still think it's an improvement over the original. It does, however, require a tremendous amount of time...keeps me out of trouble, I guess.
Mary Anne - I cloned out the most obtrusive stick from her head. Let me know what you think. The previous version can be found here. - atothevhttp://www.pbase.com/image/32339614/medium
Mary Anne, I tried cropping the distractions out but it cuts out too much from the top. I think if I had different photo editing software and some more skills I would definitely clone them out. Thanks for the suggestion. - atothev
A powerful image, but I would crop the top of the photo so there aren't pipes and rags "growing" out of the child's head. That will still leave some of the stark white light (sky?) in the top left corner, which is important to the composition.
