Otis - Honestly
by smardaz

Comment by geinafets:
This shows great technical control of lighting, especially the fine rim light on his face and shoulder. His expression is beautiful because it does truly look genuine. To be a bit picky, there is a bit of harsh clipping in the blacks showing on my monitor, and the sharpening is a little over-done for my taste. I would have also preferred if less of his face was cropped on the left side; I can't seem to verbalize quite why I feel that way besides saying that it feels like an uncomfortable place to crop someone's face--though maybe the uncomfortableness works with the image's emotion. It's nice to crop close when the model has such a telling expression, but because of the particular emotion showed, I wonder if it would have worked better with more negative space for another tangible/physical representation of hurt, pain, worry, anxiety, and/or isolation.

While I'd consider this image to be on the right side of the bell curve for portraits, for me to bump it up any higher, I would need to see something more than just a beautiful, technically sounds visual representation of the subject at a specific point in time. I want to see some kind of story, some kind of deeper insight into the subject. Basically, I think this is a great image, but I know what kind of talent lurks beneath the surface of the photographers on DPC, and I want to push that talent to its limit : )

Otis - Honestly
by smardaz

Comment by Paul:
Exceptional portrait.

Otis - Honestly
by smardaz

Comment by NiallOTuama:
Love this.
Great great portrait!

Otis - Honestly
by smardaz

Comment by drake217:
Great detail.

Otis - Honestly
by smardaz

Comment by vikas:
Great portrait, those eyes are razor sharp and show a lot of emotion. IMO it would have looked amazing in B&W, also being advanced editing I would have removed the white spots in the background and t-shirt to clean up the shot - another suggestion is the crop from left needs to be a just a tad bit more.

Otis - Honestly
by smardaz

Comment by HarveyG:
Very moody, great crisp portrait.

Otis - Honestly
by smardaz

Comment by piraino:
Nice. I love the detail, composition, and his expression.

thought process
by smardaz

Comment by MaryO:
Like the lighting here.

thought process
by smardaz

Comment by chromeydome:
beautiful lighting, superb posing and capture, well seen, well done 10

thought process
by smardaz

Comment by adigitalromance:
Nice portrait. I would love to see more of the face, i.e. less hat and sunglasses, but if that's the look you were going for, you nailed it.