I went on a lot of boat rides in my 10 days in London and Paris. My dad was a sailor and a love of water flows in my blood alongside the bits and bytes. This photo is from one of the trips in Paris, the horror ride in the boat on the Seine (see below for more details).

This image nearly defeated me. It is a big crop – what is left is under a quarter of the original image. It wasn’t particularly in focus and the color was awful – for this read dirty grey – the boats had the sun hitting their sides so the color is washed out.

I did some fancy work with Curves to get the color out of the image. I over adjusted the colours very harshly and then blended a couple of versions of the image back into itself. The result is pretty good and I think the image has some charm and that’s why it’s here.

It really was a beautiful afternoon in Paris.

Helen Bradley