Vet shot...not sure

[cso]

Have bifurcated reactions...people either really like it, or find it really boring. Can I get some feedback, and suggestions on edits or improvements?

The photo was taken during a Veteran's Day memorial service moment of silence. It's supposed to be solemn.

Canon 20D
16-35L
1/400s f/4.5 at 50.0mm iso100
circular polarizing
I don't think I touched it, i.e. straight out of the camera.

 

[Rob]

It's a good crisp shot, and you've captured the personality of your main subject very well. However, I'm not sure about the composition - I'd have been tempted to move the shot left and up a bit to crop out the chap on the bottom right and include the one on the same plane on the left and hopefully not chop off the hat.

I think to achieve greater solemnity (word?) that you'd need the subject(s) to be more engrossed in the goings on, I think the main subject was half tempted to smile whilst looking at you - a natural reaction to a camera.

It's certainly not boring, and you've done well to capture enough information to tell the viewer that they are veterans - the poppies, medals and semi uniform are all good.

I do like it, and as you included an edit, here's kind of what I meant:

Do you like it?

Rob

 

[cso]

I definitely like the crop better, however, I'm not sure about the greyscale. To be fair, you probably did it with a quickie desaturate or convert to greyscale and lost a lot of the tonality...

...it definitely gets me thinking about trying a proper conversion to b&w when I get back to my real computer (on my g-friend's laptop right now so can't fix either this photo or the other one you so kindly commented on...)