Other then the Desaturation, some minor lights in the background and the area under his chin, this is almost straight from the camera.
I was at a party after a banquet. This is one of my best friends, Steve. I had just taken a similar photo of his son and as I was making this photo, his lovely wife put her hand under his chin.
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First... This photo definitely caught my eye when browsing the entries. It's certainly a fun, relaxed, 'impromptu' portrait. And it is BW! ;)
From a technical standpoint it could use a slight bump in contrast. Focus seems a little soft as well. The lighting is nice, leaving some shadow areas on the left side of the frame for depth. Good catchlights in the eyes.
I like the 100% black BG and it's possible that a radically off centered crop would have been good. Either leave Steveie in the center and go with a square crop like one of the commentators suggested or crop most of the black space from the left which would leave stevie looking pretty off-balance!
As it relates to the challenge... Pretty hard not to meet the requirements of the challenge, so the technicals became that much more important.
Ok, now this is a liiittttlllee bit strange! :) Funny expression. Looks like his head is being held like a free floating object in the hand. What's that in the background? It's distracting. Good luck in the challenge.
I wonder if Stevie B knows he looks like Christopher Guest? I'll bet he does :)
a little soft on the focus; it looks like you maybe tried to save some of the blown out highlights by bringing down the top end of the histogram or burning the highlights - the result is kind of flat lighting and loss of detail.
Ok, there is a raging debte about people's voting habits at the moment, so i will attempt to give a detailed comment with my vote:
Fun photo, altough it's been done before ;)
Now you have noting on the left of the head or on its right, so why keep the wasted space? did you try a square crop? Also I see some funky black spots, or blobs around the head nad hand and that's no good. The facial epression is good and it is to some extent an original photo. 6
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