About the Image(s)

This months image is one that I'd been looking forward to taking for about 8 years.
The foreground features the back of the head of my grandson - now age 11 - looking at a photograph I took of him when we took a trip to the Smokey Mountains when he was about 3 years old. In the picture, he's facing a waterfall while resting on a bench. His right hand is resting on a walking stick that just his size. I've liked that image before I even clicked the shutter 8 years ago. An interesting feature of the image presented is a 3rd component - a small statuette of a young boy sitting cross-legged seemingly looking straight ahead. I placed both the framed picture along with the statuette on a mantle in our house and had my grandson stand and act as if he's contemplating the picure of his younger self contemplating the waterfall. I like to call it "Evan Contemplating a Picture of Evan Contemplating a Waterfall".
I used my Canon 6D MkII with the 24-105 (f4) lens and a Canon Speedlight aimed at the ceiling to bounce the flash and get a softened light. As you can tell from the original image, my ability to get the image perfectly vertical was way off, but, with straightening and cropping. I thing it turned out pretty well.
In Lightroom, the crop was changed from the original 3:2 ration to a 16:9 to eliminate some of the distrations along the edges. I used a mask to eliminate the shadow from the flash on the wall behind the statuette. I also masked the walking stick to brighten it a bit and make it more noticeable.All other adjustment were minor slider moves with the exception of the Highlights (-50) and the shadows (+44).
What do you think?