Shy guy

[prairierose]

I had all of 2 seconds to take this picture. Panasonic DMC FZ 30 17.4mm 1/100 f5.0
I kind of like the shadow on his face but is it distracting in any way?Anything to be done with the background? Feel free to repost only on DPS.
Thanks.

[jiminyClickit]

prairierose,

A sound investment of time, considering emotion value. If that value could be increased by a less distracting background, and lightening eyes, you should try that. I'll give it a try, too, if you want.

[prairierose]

Please give it a go as I do not yet know how to "lighten" eyes. Thanks.

[marc_714]

The close shot leaves out what is going on - for example why does he have a dirty mouth and tattered jacket. The subject itself does not have a great deal of interest to it. There is little or no expression and he looks very disengaged.
So it really needs more to grab a viewer. If we had a wider view we would be able to formulate a story

[clockdoc]

Hi,
I like your quick shot of this baby. Those who have read many of my portrait critiques know that I tend to favor catchlights in the eyes. I added one in each eye after dodging the eyes to lighten them very slightly. I also cloned out any original catchlights. Lastly I darkened the background bits using "Replace Color" in Photoshop 7.0.

[jiminyClickit]

prairierose,

A simple change to background and lighten/contrast of eyes will get you something like this:



Hope you give it a try for practice! It's a great face.

[synthesist]

In my opinion jiminyClickit, the background you chose clashes too much with the subject.

I see two solutions then:

1. Change the background to something else. (The original seemed fine to me.)
or
2. Change the subjects colours to suit the background. Photoshop CS2 has a great feature called "Match Colour" that can do this.

[jiminyClickit]

synthesist,

That would be up to prairierose.

[prairierose]

Thanks-look forward with great interest to seeing the different results BUT how do I open your picture files-takes me to flickr ?? but there I am at a loss.

[jiminyClickit]

prairierose,

You're welcome to look through Flickr: when you get there after clicking on photo, look to right, find "jbabbs46' photostream" and click on it.

This is the only version on there, and it's set on Private because it's your photo, even if I editted it. It's an ethical consideration.

Would you want some changes made to this version?