Request for critique (or a simple poll about a specific image)

[domenico Foschi]

I think that is fine to disregard the rules, when it feels right.
Subject in the center and lobotomy Hannibal Lechter style.

[jetcode]

here is yet another way to express this portrait

[Andrew O'Neill]

It's actually quite nice but I would have voted more positively if:

1. It was slightly more high key...that's a personal thing with me.
2. There wasn't that distracting, slightly angled white line in the background.

Other than that, good job for LF portraiture...and this is coming from someone who doesn't do portraiture!

[Andrew O'Neill]

jetcode, I don't think the all black back ground works well. The original back ground with out that distracting diagonal line would have been okay...and too centred.

[jetcode]

I don't think the all black back ground works well...and too centred.

lots of ways to print and experience a photograph - what doesn't work for you works for others - had I left my eye to my teachers guidance I would have become yet another clone - as it stands I expressed this image to my liking - how you perceive it is immaterial to me

[arkady n.]

This was taken with Kodak Ektar 202mm on Graphic View 4x5

I just realized that I made a mistake, this was a Kodak Ektar 203mm f7.7 lens

[Asher Kelman]

I felt that the face needed to be better defined.

So I changed the emphasis to his upper face and away from the periphery of the image. The bar behind, normally distracting now provides a base from which he is confronting us.



© 2007 Arkady Photograph

Not that this is anywhere in the same class of work, but the confrontational non-empathetic pose now reminds of me an exibition running in the Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills of Martin Schoeller's work. The ones I saw include these here but also a lot of additional far less polished, very rough non-sympathetic images.

This is of course not what you had in mind, Arkady, but what your photograph made me think of and which I try to express, before I saw the exhibition.

Asher

BTW, If the original film or RAW file was available, this image could be rendered well. I'd show the various images to the guys friens and see if any of them relate to how they see this guy!

[Asher Kelman]

What was the aperture of Ektar?

Asher

[arkady n.]

What was the aperture of Ektar?

I did not record, but I am pretty sure it was wide open at f7.7

[Peter Galuszewski]

This looks to me like more of a photojournalistic capture than a posed portrait - which is great, but lacking the help of a photo essay or additional content in the photo it lacks context. I have to admit, when I read that this was a posed shot, it took away from my regard for it - not because I have anything against posed, studio or otherwise portraits, its just that I would use a completely different set of rules to judge one than a street or photo j type capture.
All those things aside, and I know that this is largely a matter of taste (not to mention the ability of a monitor to castrate just about any photo, even if it is properly calibrated, which this one probably is not), but I prefer skin tones to be a little higher key, and I prefer more contrast. Frankly, I think I prefer an amount of contrast that borders on incorrect or overboard, but such is my taste
Still, its hard to say if I would be happy or unhappy with this shot had I made it - I am still so new to LF that getting a good neg is still an achievement, but taking format out of the equation, no, it would probably not be in my portfolio.