1 is perfect.
I can see what you going for in 3 but it hasn't quite wield for me.
His legs need to be in a better position.
Also would like to see all these in black and white
Love the processing, but, yeah, (3) misses due to the feminine legs. I know you were going for "the Thinker", but I would look again at the original sculpture. The feet are flat, not on tip toes.
#1. I like it. The dark area between his shoulders and hips doesn't look quite right to me.
#3 Worth doing again. The face is not seen well. Perhaps a turn more to profile would help. The Thinker was nude. Maybe your model should be too. Or smooth over the lines of the clothing edges.
Thanks everyone for your input guys!
All points are taken. I can bring the shadows back on #1, #2 to my eye is fine considering my monitor settings, #3 was spontaneous replica of Rodin's "The Thinker" although I had a photo of the actual sculpture on my phone during the shoot, I didn't pay much attention to the pose and the model ended up mirroring it, so not only position of the legs is wrong, but the hands too. In #4 I was pursuing to get a look of unbearable loss in his face. I happened to see consequence of the earthquake in Armenia in 1988 and the face of that young guy sitting on the porch of his destroyed house with his loved once buried underneath of rubble permanently etched in my mind. I was wandering if his facial expression seemed believable to viewer.
I recommend adjusting the sharpening portion of your photo processing workflow for these photos. It looks as though USM has been cranked a bit too much, which makes the images look a bit low-res. A proper adjustment to your sharpening filter and an appropriate resize would go a long way to increasing perceived resolution of the images.
Very charismatic series here. I'll go with the possibility suggested above by Kakomu about using sharpening, and perhaps Clarity (or equivalent) with a little greater discrimination. But I think you, and the model, are really on to a memorable look.
