Musician

[JDP]

The person in the foreground is named Tony Criss. He's homeless, and plays a mean blues harmonica. The person in the background is Jeff Horwich, the host of the radio show In The Loop from Minnesota Public Radio. Compositionally, how does it look?
The vignetting I'm aware of. I forgot to twist the lens hood the 1/8th of a turn more needed to fully lock it into place - opps!

[TPF Sponsor]

[TimboAA]

Good composition as well as a story behind it!

The focus on the photo is of the man playing the harmonica. I wonder how it would look with the background blurred just a hair more. If you were in a studio...i'd do something about the bush/flowers next to the saxophonist...they make it really busy around the area of the microphone.

[jimiismydaddy]

the setup is great, but Im not fond of the picture. Its just thrown in a room, boring white walls, no stage lighting, flourescent lights, looks like a ceiling or something creeping in the top left. That plant is distracting. The people and the technical capture of the shot is perfect, just looks more of a snapshot to me and got lucky with the DOF.

[JDP]

Thanks for your critiques gang. I can understand what you're saying Jim, but you need to take it in context - this was taken, after all, in the lunch room area of a homeless shelter, with minimal setup (We had to be outr by the time dinner started at 4:45). I was thinking about working on cloning out the tree, but these comments cinched it, I think I will.
As for the DOF, I didn't get lucky, I knew it was going to look like - at f/2.8 it's hard to miss it, really - no dof preview needed.

But indeed, I totally agree with the background being boring. I have some background stuff I thought about merging in... but then I have ethical issues I need to mull over to see if I feel comfortable editing something so much.

[jimiismydaddy]

This may be a better rephrasing of what I said:

Its an amazing journalistic shot, but not a promotional shot.