"Uncle Riley"

[DanOstergren30 5]

I attribute so much of my growth and strength to my mentor Riley. He introduced me to having faith in Optimism, and in doing so has completely changed my perspective on life. The amount of love and gratitude I have for him is immeasurable. I met him by chance by stopping him in the Castro area of San Francisco a little over a year ago to shoot a street portrait of him, and after doing so gave him my email and phone number. I started spending more and more time with him, and eventually he became my life/art mentor. Riley is one of the founders of a magazine called Surface, and is also the reason I am currently in New York City. This is the man who inspires me the most. I shot this on my first day in NYC just a little over two weeks ago.

 

[terri37 8]

Beautiful portrait. I love the light in this image! Lovely skin tones, yet behind him is this dancing bright light coming through the sheers. Your mastery of light in this one is fantastic.

Plus, he looks and sounds like a guy worth knowing.

 

[kathyt]

Uncle Riley is handsome! He can mentor me anytime. I like this shot. I would just clone out the small tip of the table (I think that's what it is) camera right.

 

[Robin_Usagani]

The orange thing at the bottom is asking for this image to be B&W.

 

[tirediron]

I like the image, but I don't like the lighting; having the subject's face in shadow, and the background at least two stops brighter means that I have to fight to pull my eye back to the subject. This fellow begs for a reshoot, but with slightly different lighting.

 

[DanOstergren30 5]

I like the image, but I don't like the lighting; having the subject's face in shadow, and the background at least two stops brighter means that I have to fight to pull my eye back to the subject. This fellow begs for a reshoot, but with slightly different lighting.

I'm going to have to disagree with you; I really love this lighting. It's all subjective though.

 

[amolitor]

The guy is outstanding, everything else falls between "ok" and "junk" here. There's no sense of design in the frame, the colors are all over the place, the light is all over the place, the guy is placed in the frame in such a way as to suggest an environmental portrait, but there's no environment, and what little there was is destroyed by the moderately shallow DoF.

The subject is sufficiently good to overcome the photographer's shortcomings here, but the photographer didn't make any magic happen here at all except selecting the right moment to press the shutter button. That's a big one, but we're used to seeing more from you, Dan.

Is this surfacemag.com, or a different magazine also called "surface"?

 

[tirediron]

I like the image, but I don't like the lighting; having the subject's face in shadow, and the background at least two stops brighter means that I have to fight to pull my eye back to the subject. This fellow begs for a reshoot, but with slightly different lighting.

I'm going to have to disagree with you; I really love this lighting. It's all subjective though.

Fair enough... it's your work!

 

[DanOstergren30 5]

The guy is outstanding, everything else falls between "ok" and "junk" here. There's no sense of design in the frame, the colors are all over the place, the light is all over the place, the guy is placed in the frame in such a way as to suggest an environmental portrait, but there's no environment, and what little there was is destroyed by the moderately shallow DoF.

The subject is sufficiently good to overcome the photographer's shortcomings here, but the photographer didn't make any magic happen here at all except selecting the right moment to press the shutter button. That's a big one, but we're used to seeing more from you, Dan.

Is this surfacemag.com, or a different magazine also called "surface"?

Thanks for sharing your matter-of-fact opinions.
Yes, it's surfacemag.com.

 

[DanOstergren30 5]

The orange thing at the bottom is asking for this image to be B&W.

I agree, that orange tool box needs to go, as well as the table corner that Kathy pointed out. The rest I like, including the light.

 

[DanOstergren30 5]

Beautiful portrait. I love the light in this image! Lovely skin tones, yet behind him is this dancing bright light coming through the sheers. Your mastery of light in this one is fantastic.

Plus, he looks and sounds like a guy worth knowing.

Thank you! I quite like the light in this one as well! There are some aspects I feel the photo could be improved on elsewhere, but the lighting is what really stands out to me.

 

[D-B-J]

Beautiful portrait. I love the light in this image! Lovely skin tones, yet behind him is this dancing bright light coming through the sheers. Your mastery of light in this one is fantastic.

Plus, he looks and sounds like a guy worth knowing.

Thank you! I quite like the light in this one as well! There are some aspects I feel the photo could be improved on elsewhere, but the lighting is what really stands out to me.

I also like the lighting. And the posing. The only thing that bothers me is the furniture subject-left. I wish you had moved slightly left and had the background completely blown (had him in front of the windows). But that's just my opinion.

Jake