Husband and wife team; she does the cooking, he does the sewing.

He'll alter your clothes for 50 Baht, she'll make you a mean som tam (papaya salad) for 20

(half a dollar). I enjoyed observing their partnership, interacting with them and of course

the spicy som tam. Please comment, cheers, Miles.

I love learning from photographers like you. Thank you for sharing this image with us. The composition is great, as are the tones.

Great composition and use of light.

faces are quite dark.

I'm very flattered, especially after seeing your superb photo "supernatural" Cheers, Miles.

That's because they have lots of sunshine in Thailand and therefore darker faces. If I wanted to change their character I could do so, however I like them like this; also there are strong whites nearby already. It's all subjective after all. Thanks for commenting, cheers, Miles.

By the way Ben, the portraits in your portfolio are excellent, I appreciate comments from such a good photographer, please continue!

thanks miles. for what its worth, i've been using two different photoshop features to lighten areas like these faces, without necessarily altering the character of the shot. both involve creating a layer mask. if you haven't done that yet, i recommend learning it (i didn't for three years, and lost about a year of that time being inefficient on photos as a result). method one, create a layer mask, selecting hide in the mask option. then on the underlying photo, adjust levels or curves. then use white paintbrush, or a gray if you don't want the entire effect, to lighten just the faces. then flatten the layer and save. by selectively lightening the faces, the rest of the photo can remain the same. i try to be subtle enough that you can't quite tell the manipulation. virtually every portrait you looked at has some variant of this method applied.

Very interesting, Ben. I suppose the purist in me is afraid to play with things like that - I'm no wizard with photoshop - just curves to emulate Tri X really. I will try this some time though, your results work well. All the best, Miles.

here's a simpler way then. just create a duplicate layer. on the background layer, lighten some. then erase just where you want to lighten on the upper layer and merge. the advantage of layer mask is you can correct an error, but this way works quick and well for many things. anyway, stay in touch, its fun to compare notes.