Karl-Heinz

Hi Robert, this is a very fine portrait, it is excellent in composure, the detail in his face is wonderful, I like this a lot, well done - Richard.

He's back. :) Very nice portrait. I like the subdued lighting. Nice details.

Interesting portrait. I know you like high contrast. Looks like here it works good.

Nice 'thoughtful' portrait, one of my favorites.

Beautiful portrait, Robert.

Robert, I like the composition and the background. The two things that hurt the image IMHO are the highlights on his arm which I find draw too much attention, and the extreme graininess in his face. The highlights can be addressed in photoshop, but I'm wondering if the grain is a deliberate move on your part? It seems to be mostly effecting the face while the other shadow areas have a much smoother look.

right arm! yes it is too much, but it is funny I didn't realised it until now ( BW version). the grain is caused by the 800iso digital noise. but I think grain is sometimes not bad.

BTW:what is "IMO", I always read it but I don't know?? :-(

Robert,

 

I agree with you that noise isn't always a bad thing. At times people introduce noise intentionally, and this is why I was wondering if the noise was a deliberate move on your part. It seems to be effecting the face most of all, while the other shadow areas look fairly clean. Did you do a selective sharpening of just the man and leave the background unsharpened?

 

I like grainy black and white's (b&w film), but excessive digital noise tends to hurt an image like this. Without that noise I would really like this shot very much.

 

I know there are some programs available that help to reduce noise but I haven't researched them yet. If they are any good it might help on images like this. If anyone knows of a good program to clean up noise let us know because I'd like to buy it myself!

 

IMO is short for in my opinion. I changed my last post to read IMHO - in my humble opinion. :-)

Bob, I sharpned only the face. But usually I do sharpen all my images which are resized for the web. I very seldom reduce the noise by software because it makes the details disappear.

I try avoid grain making picutres pictures of young girls and smooth surfaces.

BTW:I looke a the large version of this photo and on my monitor ( resolution 1800x1440 32bit) I don't see too much grain except the face, and for Karl-Heinz it's ok, he looks in "natura" much more grainy :-)??

Robert, did you use unsharp masking or the sharpening tool? Just curious.

Well done - Robert - I like it!

Greetings Paul

I like the composition a lot Robert. Its quite a warm and empathetic portrait of the gentleman. I agree about the points concerning the arm. I'm not so bad with the grain or noise per se but it seems slightly oversharpened, especially when looking at it in large format. The thing that gets me a bit is the overall tone of the face. I know that its sepia toned but his face gives the sense of being wind burnt or sun burnt. Its still nice work Robert and I hope you continue to explore portraits as you seem to have a very good eye for them.