Drew is an old friend of Amanda and mine, and a good guy. This is the first time we've seen him with this outstanding beard he's been working on, so we wanted a portrait of him in which the beard featured prominently (although not to the exclusion of everything else).
Absolutely beautiful evan, such texture both in light and subject. The blacks are hmmm profoundly black as i rarely see them in B&W conversions (mine included).
Awesome job all around. To really nitpik maybe a background without any texture would attract my eye less on that part of the picture . But then again i might be looking at it just because i am a photographer, probably 99% of the non photographers don't event notice such a tiny detail.
Nice job with this shot ... I like the pose and lighting ... not something I would have ever thought of but it works so well at capturing the beard without detracting from the person / portrait.
Jack: profiles are always an interesting compositional challenge. Do you center the face, or the head, or do you try to balance the two somewhere in between? Here, I felt that centering (approximately) the head gave me the most natural crop on his arms and shoulders. Unless I wanted a considerably looser crop, anything bringing the face toward the middle would entail lopping off more arm/shoulder on the right of the frame. I felt that the nearly centered head was the best compositional solution (after trying quite a variety of options!) overall, but as I said that's one of the real challenges of profile portraits.
I think the way Evan composed it creates this wonderful triangle. The head being the tip and then the line down to the subjects left hand forms the right side. Then the line from that hand to the other hand forms the base and then the lin from the hand back to the head. CLASSIC....Di Vinci inspired comp? Vemeer light?
Great pose for the subject, strong, yet open. Lighting a always is top notch. I'm with Jack though, I don;t know what the alternatives would be but the lack of space on the left bothers me (and you know I'm not a stickler for "rules").
I have re-edited the image and incorporated some of your suggestions. Among other things, there is a bit more space left and a smidge left right. Ear and buttons burned in. Now that I'm home, this was also processed from the RAW instead of basically being a sharpened JPG.
