Wise Old Tudor

[grumpy hec]

Back in the halcyon days of summer before the grey days descended my wife and I went to a Tudor weekend at Kentwell Hall in Suffolk. It was a superb day and well worth a day of anyone's time.

One of the many people we talked to was this gent who was a clock maker who, for the purposes of this event at least, dealt only in the technology appropriate to Tudor times. He had a small but fascinating collections of clocks and portable sundials including a wondrous wooden time piece. After talking to him for a long time I was able to press the shutter release many times and this image was one of my favourites.



cheers

Hec

[mknittle]

Very nice portrait Hec, I do like it a lot

[ST1]

What a character you've captured Hec, well done

[Manfred M]

Excellent image Hec! You've got yourself an excellent character shot there.

That's quite the beard he is sporting! It directs the viewer's eye's right up to his face. While I think I understand why you composed the way you did, I wonder if more of a headshot where you lose most of his beard might not be an approach the provides an even more compelling image. While his beard is interesting, I find his wrinkled face even more interesting.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[rpcrowe]

You could have told us that this is Merlin the Magician and I would have believed it. Great shot both technically and artistically...

[DEAN01]

+1 to Richard's comment.

[Chrisclick]

Wonderful image, and amazing B&W. I have just started into B&W, your shot gives me something to aspire to!

[Mike Buckley]

Such a wonderful photo for all the reasons already mentioned. My only nitpick is that the beard seems a little too sharp, giving me the impression that his facial hair is hard and wiry rather than soft. Perhaps most important, that hard look doesn't complement his eyes for me.

[Dave A]

Wow you nailed it. So much character in that face and you caught every bit of it.

Dave

[grumpy hec]

Thanks everyone.

A couple of interesting points.

Firstly the notion of cropping to the face minus the beard. I hadn't considered that one and perhaps I should have as the reason for the suggestion makes sense. At the time the beard was upper most in my mind.

Secondly is the beard too sharp. That is fascinating as when I look again as it's posted and compare to an A3 print version which I have done as one of my ten for CPAGB the beard does stand out more. The print is more controlled and better balanced on the print. This seems counter intuitive to me as I would have thought it would be softer as a JPEG on screen than a much worked on print. Perhaps this illustrates why print is best.

Hec

[IzzieK]

Another +1 to Richard, Hec. Merlin the Wizard was my first thought too..

[Sam W]

Hec - terrific photo. To me the best feature in the photo is the way you captured his eyes. I think all the other features support them. - Sam

[Mike Buckley]

Secondly is the beard too sharp...The print is more controlled and better balanced on the print. This seems counter intuitive to me as I would have thought it would be softer as a JPEG on screen than a much worked on print.

This actually makes sense to me for two possible reasons. The electronic display is the light source emitted directly toward the viewer whereas the print display is reflected light. The physical scene that you witnessed was also reflected light, so it stands to reason that the print would appear more like the physical scene at least in mood. The JPEG will look softer when being downsized for display in the forum only if you don't sharpen the image again to take that into account. Perhaps you oversharpened the image in that last round of sharpening. As an example, I use an automated batch process to do that round of sharpening on my images and every once in a while it proves to be too much; custom sharpening each image one at a time sometimes is better even though I never do it.

Perhaps this illustrates why print is best.

It doesn't demonstrate that for me. It only demonstrates that print is different. I love all forms of display whether it's print on opaque material, print on transparent material lit from behind or projected onto a surface, positive film projected onto a surface or digital image.

[Manfred M]

Secondly is the beard too sharp. That is fascinating as when I look again as it's posted and compare to an A3 print version which I have done as one of my ten for CPAGB the beard does stand out more. The print is more controlled and better balanced on the print. This seems counter intuitive to me as I would have thought it would be softer as a JPEG on screen than a much worked on print. Perhaps this illustrates why print is best.

Hec

Just to add to Mikes thoughts. Your print is running at between 300 and 360 dpi (depending on the make of the printer), so the print will have little to no downsampling. When displaying on a screen, you are looking somewhere around 100 ppi, so you are going to get some really massive downsampling when you display on the web, even for full screen display. Of course the screen size will make a difference too.

The issue with downsampling is that you are essentially throwing away pixels and the algorithms that do that will tend to preserve edge detail where light and dark pixels are adjacent to one another. This results in inherent sharpening of the image whether you want it or not.

Prints also have another characteristic and that is to a large extent dependent on the paper you use. Glossy papers are somewhat akin to what you see on your computer screen and don't diffuse the reflected light you use to see the image. Matt papers have the opposite effect and the image tends to look a bit softer due to the light scattering from the paper. Matt papers also tend to bleed a touch more when the ink is applied, and that tends to soften the image as well.

Bottom line is different output sharpening strategies are required for screen and printing.

[KimC]

Hec, this is a positively beautiful portrait. Thank you for sharing with us.

[bnnrcn]

Very nice image