PP Depth of Field (and general C&C)

[Sprout]

So this photo was taken with my old P&S camera, which can't do any narrow DoF goodness. I'm waiting on delivery of my first "proper" camera, so I should be able to play around with the real deal soon enough!
But, I liked this picture.. at least, I liked part of it - namely the subject.
A very casual looking Monk, smoking and playing with his smart phone.

The stuff going on in the far background is very distracting though, and couldn't really be cropped away. So, I took to Photoshop to sort it out, and among other things, create some fake DoF. This took a lot of masking and messing around, but, my understanding & experience of real DoF being fairly limited, I'm not really sure how convincing it looks.

So my question, is what I've done obvious?

Original:
(after a first pass in Lightroom actually, I don't have the straight-out-the-camera JPG on this PC atm.)



Post:
DoF, colour correction, straightening, and lots of local adjustments, with the intention of bringing out his hands and face as the main focus.

I also played around with cropping at the waist, but the image gets pretty low res then, and you lose his pose, taking away from the casual-ness. And the grungyness of the lower half of the image, which I kinda like too.

Any feedback (on any aspect of the image) very welcome!

P.S. wasn't sure if this belongs better in the PP forum or the general critique forums, feel free to move it if I chose wrong.

 

[Derrel]

Except for the edge of his right arm and shoulder, your post work looks pretty good and convincing. Had you not mentioned the DOF blurring work you'd done, the horizontal photo probably would not have been spotted as "faked" by any except the most detail-oriented people or those who obsess over "fakery"...I think you did a pretty good job of allowing the defocused zone to slip into deeper and deeper defocus in a very subtle way along the fence's posts.

 

[Sprout]

Great! Ah yeah, I'll give that arm a bit of a clean up.

Which crop do you think looks better?

 

[DanOstergren]

To me it doesn't look natural, but it still looks good.

If I could offer some feedback, I feel that the overall saturation of the image is a little intense, and I think it could look better if the saturation was reduced a tiny bit.

 

[Sprout]

Aye, I don't expect to totally 'fool' experts, and those types Derrel mentioned, mostly want to make sure it doesn't look distractingly bad/wrong, and also check it makes a better image than not having messed with the DoF at all.

Any feedback appreciated yes, thank you!
I fixed the edge of his arm and dropped the saturation everywhere except his skin/phone/cigarette. Also sharpened his face a little.
Still not sure whether to go with vertical or horizontal crop, though..
I think the vertical is more interesting personally, and I've hopefully done enough to make sure the viewer can't miss the key "fun thing" of the picture.
The eye-opening thing for me at that point was realising this guy is not unusual. Most of the monks in Myanmar are glued to their phones - chatting, playing games, taking selfies - just like the rest of the country/world right now.

 

[DanOstergren]

I particularly feel that the saturation on the skin is a bit too much, but that could just be me. He's looking very orange.

 

[Sprout]

Yes, I see what you mean actually! I did want it warmer than the original, but the last version probably was looking a bit too unnatural after I toned down the rest of the image.

 

[k5MOW]

I personally like the uncropped version. I think seeing his feet and thongs adds something else to the picture.

Roger

 

[SquarePeg]

That last one is a great improvement over the original image.

 

[aoposton]

nice work. the last one is it!

 

[Sprout]

Cheers guys! And yes, thanks very much for the help Derrel and Dan.