La Dentellièreby
GilesComment: It's a brave man who doesn't utilise eye contact in a portrait challenge. Also the 6mm DOF of this lens at minimum focus distance when wide open requires careful and controlled modelling. I used to spend ages getting models to bring as much of their face into the plane of focus as was possible - a bit chin down and eyes up. Manually focussing is better too - trying to have the eyes at the back of the the depth of focus rather than in the middle of it.
I also think the 5DIII is sub-optimal in Minimal challenges in monochrome jpeg, the tones are too flat. Other cameras have some much more interesting presets in relation to contrast profiles.
Composition-wise, the black lump top left isn't helping you - it makes the composition look arbitrary, like you've just stopped someone in the street. I think the viewer expectations of the challenge were for something more controlled and set up - I think the implicit challenge was about lighting and composition and even posing, all the stuff that's not about the camera. From reading your forum post I think you thought that the lens' 'special effect' look would give you some value, in fact many DPC viewers seem to consider it a flaw ("I wish you'd have got both eyes in focus", "A narrower aperture would get more of the face in focus").
I think success in using this lens (from a DPC perspective) is to use it to isolate subjects from the background and not from their own face, you thus need to have an interesting background (or at least a background context) to isolate from. No one will understand your background here. Compare it to my 3rd place entry where, at a comparable DOF I used the model's arms and hands to provide a background context to isolate from - her hands are nicely blurred which demonstrates the lovely fall off of focus but the environmental context is presereved. Look at Paul's Blue Ribbon, great isolation, narrow DOF but the background context remains.
I gave you a 6 btw, so I liked it enough. I hope this helps.
Message edited by author 2015-04-11 02:33:57. 
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