Untitled

Critiques and ratings welcome.

Sincerely, Jukka

Excellent in all regards.

Perfect. Love emotion and your composition, and colors.

Jukka,

I really like this portrait.  It was one of the few that had me park my browser for a while to enjoy.  This reminds me of some older portraits I've seen of jazz artists from back in the late 40's - early 50's. 

My critique is this:  You have a very strong framing element which does an excellent job of bringing your viewers eyes straight to the subject.  Your choice of lighting- about spot on.  I think you have everything you need here to make a perfect portrait but lets take a look at this as a painter would and begin to eliminate some unnecessary distractions. 

1.  The reflection of the subject in the top right corner should be either complete removed or burned in at least 60 percent.  Shot from a different angle that reflection could have added to this but, in my opinion, it serves as more of a distraction than a valuable element.

2.  On the inside of the piano in the leftmost area of the gold overlay, the brightness is competing for attention with the subject's face.  When I squint my eyes out of focus and look at the photo, that area and the main subject stand out the most.  If you were to subdue the leftmost area to closer match the tone of the rightmost area, you would still retain this interesting and important element without it fighting against the reason you made this photo to begin with: the person.

3.  This is getting really picky now but two other minor areas that do nothing for the portrait but keep drawing my eyes away are: at the base of the prop stick there is a little patch of red.  I don't know what it is and it doesn't complete a larger detail.  I suggest cloning that out.  Also, on the rightmost side of the piano's folded down sheet music holder, there are two bright white highlights that don't contribute to defining a shape and really just cause the eyes to wander. 

4. Final suggestions:  As much as I like the color in this, I'm a sucker for black and white when I see such strong compositional elements.  Sometimes color can hold up a glancing viewer from really appreciating the geometry, and balance of an image.  Have you looked at this in black and white?

Please don't feel anything but proud of this photo.  This is definitely one for the walls!

in B&W with minor crop and boldening of midtones