I just did some portrait work for a local businessman. This was actually the first time a man booked me solely for a portrait session. It was definitely different than posing women but we found a few killer locations I had never been too in the city yet with this being one of them.
Nice business portrait and the background works perfect for signalling seriousness and combined with his no-nonsense expression the image screams "determination"! And then there's the hint of a smile to soften up the hard facade just a tiny bit. If that's what you were going for you succeeded in spades!
Only thing I would change is that I would not have cut the top of his head!
Great portrait! Love the pose, facial expression, and location.
A very nice head shot. Good looking guy, looking strong, determined and still pleasant. The background is all the right colours, given his wardrobe choices.
I like the very shallow, but not overly obviously shallow, depth of field, expertly judged, perfect.
As Christian says I think including the top of his head would have been better, I often crop heads quite deliberately, so this is not a bias of mine, rather an assessment of this image, but it is no disaster for the cropping.
The light on his face is very good but I would have also tried an alternative with a flag to the right of camera to slightly darken that side of his face, to further increase the 3D effect and add gravitas, but this is not to complain abouit this image rather to have an alternative which migh look even stronger. I am not suggesting much darkening, a gentle touch of weight would have been all I would have tried for. This looks as if you have added fill and very slightly over done it, to me. Don't be affraid of shade.
Backgrounds are always challenging and rarely perfect but this one is very good. The only two issues with this background are; the verticals are slightly diagonal, you need to rotate the image a tad which is easy, hope you have some head-room so you don't crop the head more. Finally, the bright yellowish vertical line, is distracting. I"d be inclined to clone over it or to have found a framing solution in camera.
Very nice, though. I'd bet he loves it. Well done.
I'm glad you noticed the color pallete. I recently discovered colorschemedesigner and love using it to ensure harmony between the subject and the background.
As for the head, well, I'm a chopper for sure. Especially when I come in close with an 85. It really become necessary when you want to get those eyes at or slightly above the top third portion of the photo. If I shoot a little wider, say with a 50mm then I have enough room to keep the top of the head but it usually doesn't bother me.
This is natural light stuff shooting by myself around the city as my studio. So no flagging and rarely some reflector going on. In this case you could almost call this a three light setup. There is a cross light from camera left coming through the store front pillars which is also reflecting slightly off the glass to camera right. Then nice soft light filtering in from behind me. Normally I would probably go quite a bit more contrasty with the post processing for personal taste but I gathered from him he wanted to keep things a little more natural looking so I went with it.
I tried cloning the vertical to camera right but just was not liking the results as it quickly becomes muddy trying to clone that large of an area of bokeh and keep it flowing with the rest of the verticals so I left it. Next time I hit up that location though I will know to position the subject slightly more to the rear to get it out of frame.
Thanks for the considered response. Like you, these days, I don't have an assistanct, so carrying stands and flags/reflectors and rigging them with public milling about, security being ... jobs worth, wind blowing etc., to contend with all the bells and whistles of photography on location shoots is rarely going to happen, unfortunately. So, I truly understand, having someone to hold a black flag, seems so simple but is a cost/imposition on family etc. and not always viable.
As I have said before, I am not a great fan of the 35mm format for portraits, prefering squareish headshots as provided by medium format cameras, that way more headroom would be available. One can do the same with a dslr by stepping back 6-12 inches and cropping the sides. But that is just me. One day I will buy a MF camera but like you, currently I work 35mm style, for the timebeing.