Uryevich

I have to be honest Eumenius and say that I am not sure that I like the fact that the head is in focus and the shoulders are not, which in this way makes the former feel detatched from the latter. He has a very strong stare and that feeling does not help and it makes his portrait heavy and threatening, especially in the way his face is put so close to us. If he was dressed in a dark uniform or something like that would definately make him a creepy character!

Mmmm, dear Arigram, your whole description fits my idea of this picture in a first approximation Next time that would be an uniform, that's how I wanted to see Alexey. Not a piece of marshmallow - a tough Aryan-totalitarian looking guy, an excellent industrial photographer and digger by himself

Can't really get your idea about DOF issue - I can't see anything wrong, that's exactly what I've planned. If only the face is sharp, doesn it not put an accent on it, eh? Optically detached head - maybe the whole LF portraiture suffers from such an anatomical blunder? What should we do if only one eye is sharp, then - would it also be a detached eye, too?

Well, allright, if that's what you wanted, I have no objections. Can you find a good Red Army or KGB uniform then?

Maybe it's my screen, but I find the left ear a little too dark and distracting to look at. About the uniform issue: you might as well stick this portrait in a documentary on young Russian inmates such as we get them on TV now and then and you wouldn't notice anything strange. That piercing look must be genetic; if I crop the face to just the eyes and the forehead dozens of other Northern-Europeans come to mind that have similar features. Something like the horsey buckteeth and the elongated jaws you see a lot in the western parts of Holland and parts of the UK.