[StevieB]

Took this today at a street busker festival

[Steve]

Hi Stevie, interesting pose that you have caught the busker in, this adds to the attraction of the image, however with you being so close to him not having eye contact is a bit of a shame. The focus is superb though as is the out of focus background which does not distract. If you wanted to improve the shot a little more you could clone out the darker diagonal in the top right but overall I think this is a great effort.

What equipment was used for this shot and at what settings?

[Dave]

Great detail in the shot & fair play for trying a different angle.....it works for me.

Possibly clone out red in top right hand corner, or tone it down so you still keep the angles in the shot ?

[StevieB]

How about this version which honestly i think looks 10 times better

[Dave]

Hi StevieB

Even though I like a few Mono's , I have to say the Colour shot is great due to the red of the bandana against the blue of his eyes, & great skin tones.

That said I thought I would have a play with a conversion to Mono to see if I could add any pointers. You'll have to excuse me as I haven't done too many People conversions.

1st thing I took the colour shot & converted using Channel Mixers, with 40% red, 30% Green & 30% Blue. This for be gave best skin tones. Immediately the shot looked sharper
Next I added a subtle S Curve to get a bit more contrast.
Then added radial gradient , adjust size to fit & then lowered layer opacity to around 30%. This to me focuses your eye more on the face than the backround.
Duplicated layes & then did a Un Sharp Mask at 17% , 25 pixels, 0 Theshold. This gave some real bite to eyes & face , but too much to bandana etc. So I applied a mask holding down ALT (so masked out completely) & then using white brush @ 20% opacity brought detail back in eyes & parts of face

Couldn't replicate you snazzy border, so simple one added. Hopefully there is something in the above that can be picked out which suits your style To be honest, just the simple CM conversion was good enough, showing how well the shot was taken in the 1st place

[StevieB]

Dave that looks amazing thanks