Two portraits, of humans enjoying life

[feral]

The first is one of my good friends, John Holroyd, exactly what he seems. He grew up in England and one of friendliest, most gracious, intelligent people you will ever meet. As I told him, “if he was a dog I would keep him”.

This was hand held, at very low light, ISO 2500, 1/30sec, f2.8, 60mm, Canon Mark III , so I think was very lucky.





One day a year where I live along Rio Grande people of both countries are allowed to cross the border freely at a low water crossing, that used to be used by the Comanches when they raided Northern Mexico. This boy was on the Texas side of river in the sand. He was lifting his finger to ask his mother, where the river was so they could cross and go home to Mexico.

[William W]

On the Portrait of the child I very much like the High Key Exposure (was that purposefully over by about two stops?) and then the "Retro" Post Production.

On the Portrait of the man, I think that you could have bumped the MkIII to at least ISO6400 to get the Tv up: EXIF states 1/50th sec (not 1/30th) . . . there is a substantial amount of Subject Movement Blur, which is most unfortunate for what is very nice available light.

WW

[mknittle]

The little boy is good.
I would have really liked the man with the black background if there were just a little more light to see a little more of his form
and had he been in sharp focus. Keep up the good work.

[Shadowman]

Nice efforts.

[bje07]

Focus on the old man seems to be on his nose and at f/2.8 the portrait lacks of sharpness.

You should have to focus on the eyes to get a more pleasant portrait

[Manfred M]

+1 to both Bill's and Jean's comments.

With the first image:

I have never been a fan of the disembodied head floating there with most of the body blending into the background. That looks just plain "spooky". I prefer seeing separation of the body from the background. I would also have preferred a tighter crop as all the space above the head really does not add to the composition.

With respect to the lens you used, the 60mm focal length is exaggerating the size of his hands. A longer focal length would have gotten you to stand further back and the distortion seen in the image would not be as apparent. A longer lens would be harder to hand hold in the light conditions you were working under, though. For a shot like this, I tend to be around 105mm - 135mm focal length on a FF camera.


Your second image does have a certain appeal, but I wonder if pushing it a bit less and leaving a bit more texture in the image might not have resulted in a stronger image.

[IzzieK]

I like the portrait of the man, not so much of the boy. There! I begged to be different as I had seen some similar examples of the man's shot (not this same man..) in one of my Black and White photography books.