How do I emphasize the face in a small photo?

[SterlingNYC]

Thank you so much for looking at this!

This is an image I took of my friend Tully, ultimately I think he wants to use it as his personal photo on the website for his sketch group, and the final image will be just two or three inches on a side.
My specific question, although I'd love any and all feedback, is how can I emphasize his face in a small photo without cropping out all the details that I feel gives the photo a sense of story?
I feel that by leaving the other half of the table in the photo it implies that he's waiting for me to sit down and play cards with him and adds a sense of tension, but by putting him only in the top half of the frame now I feel that he gets lost in the clutter of the park around him.
At this point I'm just going in circles with my post-production decisions, and would really value your input!
Thanks!

[FirstLight]

I think if this were shot so that his head were more at a thirds position, it wold give him more emphasis. Looking at the thumbnail though, I think this image should work fine for the purposes you described. I do think you got your point across. Nice job.

Hmmm - you could play with some vignettes to help draw emphasis to his face. Let me know if you'd like me to illustrate that using your image (not sure what the rules are here on editing someone else's work, and I think it's most polite to ask - lol).

hth

[wulf]

Before you can make a good decision, you need to know what size the image will be. In web design, you need to think of pixels rather than inches - the size of the image depends on the viewer's screen resolution and choice of monitor.

FWIW, here is the picture my DPS avatar was cropped from:



I think that the close crop works much better for my avatar than a thumbnail version of the whole image would:



Wulf

[SterlingNYC]

Hi Dawn!
Thank you so much for the offer of giving it a go with vignettes. I have attached here the uncropped image, since I'd really like to explore your idea of putting his eyes in a more prominent position.
I changed a few things in the photo in the interim, since I'm having a terrible time keeping my hands off of it. I reduced the desaturation so that he's less the same shade as the game board and lightened his face a bit.
I really appreciate the time you've spent on this!

[SterlingNYC]

Hi Wulf!

Your insight into website formatting is really helpful! When I started taking photos of my friends for the purposes of promoting their shows, we mostly created print media such as posters and flyers. I learned the hard way that the sort of poster that goes into the "Upcoming Shows" frame at the theater isn't just a big postcard when the closely cropped photo of my friends' heads came out the size of melons! Thinking in pixels will help me a great deal in creating and planning for an effective digital presentation and avoid the same sort of heartache.
Thanks!

[zona5101]

you try a couple of things...maybe warm up the skin tone a bit to make him more prevelent...the other might be to try selective coloring ...good luck & have fun!