Joddy Crosswhite, pictured here, is a well known musician and sound engineer who calls Beaver Island home. At the porch party yesterday and tonite at the official performance, he sat in with the RFD Boys for one of the songs. Five years ago, he was a gracious subject when I was trying to participate in a portrait theme - https://365project.org/taffy/365/2013-06-07 - not a strength then or now! Taken during his set with the band last night during the porch party (singing Dream originally sung the Everly Brothers) and processed today for b&w using Silver Efex and LR.
Taffy, this is wonderful! I really struggle with taking portraits well, and I have such a desire to figure out how to capture an image that naturally portrays the person's character and you have done it so beautifully here!
This is a wonderful portrait study ,Taffy -- I love the capture of the light and twinkle in his eyes , the gentle smile in the half open mouth which brings the whole character to life . There is no comparison with your previous portrait , This one really portrays the life and soul of the musician -- a huge fav for me !
Oh, wow, I loved looking back at your previous portrait and comparing the two. This one wins hands down. You've caught the essence of the musician perfectly. Even better on black.
He looks a real character. Beautifully shot portrait. I echo what @jyokota says here. Hard to capture character but this works so well. Humming the song now too....
@beryl Thanks for taking the time to look and comment on the comparison to my first-year attempt. I too think this has improvement -- now the early one looks 'flat.' I'm guessing it was one of my first attempts to figure out lighting and now it feels a bit forced. I do think portraiture to be one of the most challenging areas. Probably another big difference is this was in context and pretty much a candid, while the other was 'candid' as he was telling me a story or showing me something, but he knew I was there to do a portrait.
Such an improvement on the earlier portrait Taffy! In this one his character shines through! Great detail and lovely light. Your processing choice is perfect here! Fav!
It seems to me that Beaver island is a very beautiful and a very musical place. I would love that! This is a really good portrait. All the textures fit so well together. The pose is natural and gives rise to curiosity as to what he is looking at and thinking. Massive technical improvement on your previous attempt - although you had a great composition there the first time, as well as here.
What a marvelous portrait! Equally as wonderful is to read about your music scene there! It's one of my favourite things about coming up here...though this summer has left little time to attend as much as I'd like!
@helenhall Thanks Helen! Yes, Beaver Island is very special. For example, tomorrow if weather cooperates, I'll be wading into a pond to take photos with my photo buddy, Vickey. Then, I get to see my neighbor's daughter who is visiting from England (and is just a little younger than me, so it's a treat to get to see her) when we have lunch at her mom's probably out on the deck in view of the lake, and tomorrow night is the opening night for Baroque on Beaver with a string quartet from Chicago performing in our little community center auditorium. Not a typical day, but not terribly unusual in variety and interest. I do love it here.
