This is a candid portrait of an old man taken near one of the Buddhist temples in Bangkok. I have no idea what his history is (he does not speak English, and I don't speak Thai beyond "Sawadee-krap" which means Hello). But the intensity in his eyes led me to think that he would have told me about some battles in his past, if he could). One thing which puzzled me at the time - this man is wearing a sweater! Meanwhile I was wearing a thinnest of my t-shirts and still sweating, it was around 80, I recall... It is actually quite common sight, it is winter in Thailand and locals layer up. They even put sweaters on their dogs :).
Thank you for the comments and the ribbon - a nice surprise upon my return from an amazing 2-week trip to Indochina!
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I rarely comment on photo contests. I do not understand competition in art. That aside, awelsh made a comment below that I agree with. Get rid of the HDR in this and it would be a better image. It looks like it came from a video game right now. One other small point, the hand in the foreground is too large. It has the appearance of being larger than the head, which in fact it is not. Draw the hand back a bit, lean the subject forward a bit, problem solved. Given that fact that this was a candid snap though , the larger than head hand could be over looked, although I would hesitate to call this a portrait at that point.
Right when I was wandering if you forgot to send us a souvenir from your recent travels, we got this old man from Thailand carrying your signature, so to speak! Can't put together the face with the sweater! Just wonderful. And what was the topic of the conversation you had?
The subject and pose are both very expressive and the pendant suggests something about a story. Given the choice of going for high detail all over the image, I feel the out of focus little finger is a bit out of place. To be honest, this kind of processing and contrast are well over the top for my taste, but that's just my taste, I am sure many will love it.
take photo of wrinkly old man, apply nik filter effect (or some sort of HDR or high pass sharpening), post to DP challenge, get votes.
Sorry for my jadedness, the processing on this photo is a bit cliche, even if it does get good votes. The portrait would be more engaging if two things were done- have subject look at the camera, and less telephoto compression (shoot with a wider angle lens, such as 50mm or 35mm full-frame equivalent, but from a closer distance).
You are cheating because this guy has such a fabulous face! Very few images in this challenge that make you look twice, and this is one of them. Good luck on this one but you shouldn't need it.
Old warrior
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