I am glad I didn't go gray at age 11 :P
I don't know what the intention was but he looks like he has gray hair. Not really a flattering effect. Composition, focus, and timing on the expression are all good though. Hope this helps.
ehh, its pretty gray britt, but you know a lot more about me when it comes to PS. doesnt seem like there is enough contrast, but then again, i probably go overboard with my contrast.
a few nits to point out...you got a little sloppy with your dodging/light painting around his right eyebrow, right cheek, right chin. those are the three areas I see. also, maybe some cloning marks in the gray area in the left of the frame.
I assume that when you guys say contrast you mean the overall ratio or light to dark or black to white. This image and retouch was focusing on midtone contrast which basically boils down to the ratio of blacks and white in the middle third of the histogram. The shadow/highlight tool has a little slider at the botton when you look at the advanced tool set that is for this specifically. If you have not played with it, do yourself a favor and give it a try.
B&W portraits are one of the more difficult things to execute effectively because the strong attractive force of COLOR contrast is missing from the bag of tricks. You've done an excellent job here, starting with your choice of background tone, which sets up the contrast dynamic for the brightly lit far side of the short-lit face in the very flattering oblique angle to the camera: everything works to pull the eye into his face and make a strong connection.
Also noteworthy with regard to the background is how its tone and size work to balance the distraction of the striped shirt. The gray background, because its about twice as large area-wise and nearly identical in value to the dark stripes creates the balance perceptually. The two cancel each other out, pushing the eye toward what is between them: the face.
I'd suggest cropping differently as shown below to move the eyes up in the frame and eliminate the distracting gap over the head and the ear cut off by the frame (better not to show it). With the hair filling the entire upper right there's no compelling reason to get pulled off the face to go check it out, which is the dynamic gaps create. Gaps attract attention sooner or later and the brain tells the eye to go check them out. Net effect? Eye gets pulled off the face sooner. Also note now how I've used the point where the hair intersects with the top of the frame to create a nice strong curved leading line down to the face. The choice of crop on the bottom right takes advantage of the curve in the seam on the shoulder to pull the eye up and along it to the face. After I cropped to create those leading line dynamics I found there wasn't enough balance so I added some background on the left - you'll want to a better job if you decide to crop like this. Overall I think it has more impact because the eye isn't tempted up off the face into the gap above the head:
BrittMcT wrote:
canerino... what are you part hawk or something?
hahah, no, but i know you strive for excellence/perfection with your processing (and often get there). so I just wanted to point that out to you in case you missed it.
