Lions of the Atlas

Football is the national sporting obsession of Morocco. In the afternoon hordes of enthusiastic fans descend on the beach at the coastal town of Essaouira. Soon after makeshift pitches spring up wherever there is space, and rowdy competition ensues.

I wanted to create a relaxed Sunday-afternoon mood with this photo. To emphasise this in post processing, I pushed the brightness higher for a high-key image, and applied a gentle gaussian blur layer, which creates a similar effect to a diffusion filter. Overall this gives the image a muted, dreamy effect.