I love this so, so much! Proper old school feel to it, a real gem! I love this type of photography, won't do well in dpc, but who cares! You know you're a decent photographer when you can produce work like this without resorting to photoshop to give you that 'WOW' factor - I know, I'm not a decent photographer, and yes, I have to resort to photoshop to do well!!! Lol.
As usual, top quality stuff from you Lesley. Your ability to capture the human condition within your pictures is getting better every day. Congrats for this wonderful picture and score (after all, is a great score considering the avarege voter's taste here at DPC)
37'th out of 619...???!!!!! I think you should switch to 'western lights' instead ;) lol. (Jokes apart)This is an exceptional capture and I loved it at very first glance. I would love to see the colored version of this also.
What a superb character study - love the way it looks like he emerging from the smoke. The way this was processed gives it a timeless feel.
* edited to remove all the spaces & characters that got in here when I was on the phone and cleaning my keyboard, not noticing I had about a zillion spaces & characters and added comment - lol