Is this any good?

Going for more of a serious, thoughtful pose:

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The pose looks good & you did a great job of blacking out the background. But I think the face is a little underexposed with an orange look. Not knowing his actual complexion, the skin color may be correct though.
Have you tried making the “better bounce card” for your 430ex? It can be found in a thread in the flash section of the forums?

I think I would like it more if your neck and/or shirt were a little more visible. I kind of get a feeling that your head is disembodied and there are a separate set of hands floating in front of it.

I actually like the way he appears to be coming out of the background. I did a simple photo filter layer to cool off the color. Might be just a tad too red, still.

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I like the first one better, good job.

pose looks great. i wouldn't mind being able to see his shoulders, but if that's what you were going for, then you did good.

my monitor here is uncalibrated, so this might be off, but i took down the red a bit and cranked up the white of the photo w/ levels to try and correct the underexposure. again, my monitor is uncalibrated, so i could be completely off, but i went by the histogram so it should be close.

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Yeah... other then wb being off, looks good. Good minimal light issues in the glasses. I think it works fine. Here is my tweak...

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THe light on the face and hands looks real good and the pose/expression terrific. There should be some evidence of a shirt to get away from the floating head impression.

Thanks for the help guys.. the color adjustment in the last two edits seems pretty good.

I was actually going for a "floating head" sort of look, so the black shirt/black background idea worked out well, at least as far as what I was trying to achieve.

Thanks for the help!