Unabashed
by SJCarter

Comment:
Very subtle color added. And while i do think it fits this person, it's not the challenge. vote:4

Fading Hopes.
by thedarkpose

Comment:
I have looked at this for a while before commenting/voting. You have used a very harsh contrast and i suspect it was your intention. By doing so the clothing is overexposed. I do feel it brings out better the darkness of the skin. The other side is that you have very deep shadows which result in losing the outer eye definition on the eye to the left, which doesn't look good.
Also the beard is overexposed which i personally don't like because you have lost the feel of the hairs here and as such lost the roughness here that you have created by the harsh contrast everywhere else. Overall i think the choice of hard contrast fits, but i would have liked to have seen it used more focused, so it wouldn't be there where it detracts from the feel of the image.
vote:6

geek.
by sirmalloc

Comment:
I very much like the idea. A laptop on the background and a person that is looking away wearing a geek-sign: all very complementary elements. To me personally i feel you could have maybe placed them better. He looks away from us, which fits the geek part, but he also looks away from the laptop, which doesn't fit. Maybe placing the laptop to the left of him (from our point of view) would fit more in the story. vote=6

Little Brother
by chriswithredhair

Comment:
You leave a lot of space next to the portrait, and that can be very good if.. if that part tells me something more, if it adds to the person. Here i see he is on a open area, but how does it relate to him? If i saw some wooden play things around, i could make the assumption that he is laughing because he is playing, but now i know nothing more. So to me it is lost space, which could be used for the person itself.
The light falls hard on the hair. Does he have white-isch hair? That would explain the slightly overexposed part.
I do feel as if you captured a bit of innocence in this shot, but it looses some of its impact because of the non-helping background. vote:5

Serenade
by crazydaisy

Comment:
People (including me) look to the brightest part of a photo.. it is natural. Here you see that that leads to the hand and not her face. I really do like your idea of letting the guitar leading you up to the face, but light should support this and not work against it in my opinion. vote=5

Child of Mischief
by Kelli

Comment:
Why did you put him to the right of the photo? He looks to the right, and instinctively i would say that the look needs more space on the right to give it more impact on us. Now you break the look in my opinion.

I do like how the black hair goes into the background, connecting the two. At the same time the light gives us enough to feel the texture of the hair. The same goes for the clothing.. nice detail because of good use of light there.

However i don't like the light on his face, meaning it's good on his face, but not eyes or vice versa. The white of the eyes looks darker than the skin, which doesn't feel right. Maybe just a slight lightening of the white in the eyes? Also you have chosen for a very straight forward light, which in this case also means that his ear gets a lot of light. It's a secondary attraction-point because the hair cuts it off of the face and thus you get two points of interest, damaging the impact of the face. If you had chosen to put your light slightly to the right of you, the ear would have been in the shadow and attract less attention.

vote:5

Within
by Shermy

Comment:
I like how this shot is different. Her make-up, hair-do, jewels and clothing all fit together nicely to create a special look, which is emphasized by her look. I like that you decided to take the photo from above.. a unique perspective which fit her.

I don't like how the second hand seems to drop in from the outside (right one on the photo). At first i didn't have the idea it was one of hers really. I would have preferred it if it was connected to the body as the first one (left on the photo) is. vote=7

Vera
by geneward2

Comment:
I like the hair fading in the blackness behind. Very nice light falling on both eyes. I also like how the light brings out the texture in both hair and clothing. But somehow to me it looks like the focus was not on the most visible eye (on the right side of the photo) but on the mouth. vote=6

Arun
by Gordon

Comment:
Looks like sepia on my screen. I do like the portrait though: nice light, nice expression and good composition.. still sepia not b/w. vote=4

Time to go
by nicklevy

Comment:
The very bright white at the bottom half is very strong competition for attention with her look. I keep switching between top and bottom half. vote=5