What I do not like is the obvious blurring of the background beyond what was captured. Make it subtle as at the moment it is too fake and detracts from what is a great capture.
Well, you’d better blame my lens in that case. That is simply the result of the distance + depth of field.
And speaking as someone who purposely avoids “overediting” (including massive noise reduction, reducing Clarity, selective blurring, adding vignettes, and cloning elements) in my color work, this type of accusation rankles me a bit.
Below is a chunk of the original and unedited scene (as you can tell, it’s a sizeable crop) to show you how the depth of field looked in the wider view.
