Comment on this portrait please!

Post processing: PS CS3

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a bit too contrasty. the background is too distracting, and a lot of the details are blown out. do you have the original for comparison?

^ agree, I am not a fan of the monochrome selection in this one.

Flo and hecster have nailed the problem. If the subject could be isolated from the background, it would be a big help, because the background foliage was obviously burned out completely. This is one of those cases where some of the blown out background could have been saved by something as simple as a Polarizing Filter.

I wouldnt put this in the portrait category. It has a nice journalism feel to it.

While I have to agree with namaddan in that I'm not sure I would consider this a "portrait" as such, I do have to say I think this is an excellent composition. I do think you went a bit far with the post processing and I too would like to see the original, but I don't really find the background all that distracting at all...my eye went right to the subject here (and particularly the look on the man's face!). In fact, I didn't really even notice the issues with the background until I saw the mentioned.

Personally I don't think the background is really a big issue at all here, but after reading the other comments if you should feel that it is, I would say that I also think this shot would definitely be well worth fixing in PS...because the foliage in the background isn't really all that important, you could just reshoot some similar foliage and then clone it in to this shot to make it "perfect". Again I would back off on the processing just a bit, but I think the over-all tonality of the shot works quite well for this subject...it has a very old National Geographic feel about it to me.

Just my $.02 worth,
Jim

nice composition but the contrast hurts my head!

Thank you very much for the comments. I will post the original picture shortly.
Many thanks,
-Reef