This is my first portrait entry and my first self portrait, so be gentle!
I put the camera on a tripod and sat sat on a stool in front of a projection screen an took the shot with the self timer. I used a 580EX with a GF Lightsphere mounted on the hot shoe aimed up and back. I set the focus with a tape measure and bracketed some shots with the focus changed slightly to make sure I got one with good focus.
I converted from RAW with Canon's DPP and also did the black and white conversion in there with the RGB sliders. In PS, I adjusted the levels, returned some detail to the hat and cloned out my shadow on the screen behind me. Then cropped, sharpened and saved for web.
Post Challenge: OK, I guess nobody got that I was going for the grieving cowboy look. The title is the first phrase of the song "Taps"
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Color/Saturation/Hue N/A Brightness good, Contrast good. Focus Excellent Depth of field very good
The blank background takes away from the picture. The photo looks a bit overprocessed, as evidenced alon the edge of the hat, particularly along the left side of the frame.
Crop is a bit tight, as the hat bleeds out of the frame. The head-on lighting makes the skin shiny, coupled with the intense stare, it gives it an almost Heeere's Johnny! feel. Sort of a half crazy cujo kind of thing.
I see you were going for a greiving portrait. Downcast eyes, and a downward tilted head would help there. The grieving tend to look down and not face the world.
My apologies if this is an SP, but this looks like a mad crazy cowboy who's gonna start accusing me of something to pick a fight. "Hey you, you seen my horse? You stole my horse didn't you? C'mon man, give it back. Now! Hey, are you DEAF. I said give it BACK! Don't you walk away from me, DAMMIT." Something about the eyes. He's scary. :) Quite a good shot technically, but wow, he gives me the creeps.
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