To me this is a nice photo of an interesting man. It doesn't tell me much of a story though. Posibly because it looks too posed but it is so hard to stop people posing for photos.

Do you get upset if i said this picture is far better then the young girl one.

IMHO This shot would have benefited from the close facial composition seen in the photograph of the young girl, Khun Soo has a great face for this type of character portrait, the deeply etched lines and weathered skin tell of his many years of toil out in the elements. The long in the tooth smile, with one tooth missing are a give away to his years on this earth and his humble origins. His headress has bright colours that would add vibrancy to a tighter shot.

As the shot is, the depth of field control has nicely thrown the background out of focus emphasising the main subject to good effect, it's well exposed with good saturation and is sharp enough.

Try a tight facial crop in you photo manipulation software and see which you prefer, to me with this subject, it's all about the face.

On, saying that look at his hands, these could well be the subject for another photo session, a close up using a chisel or other hand tool, again cropped tight with his hands as the main subject of the shot.

Nice colors, great face. I tried cropping it in different ways, the way you have it is good as it gets. With this crop there is at least a hint of a story with the weathered piece of wood in his hand.

I like it, it would go good in a collection of Thai faces. Sharpness and image grain are a bit of a concern though. With a sharper image the tighter crop would work.

Do you get upset if i said this picture is far better then the young girl one.

No. But I would be open to your input as to why. Thank you!

IMHO This shot would have benefited from the close facial composition seen in the photograph of the young girl, Khun Soo has a great face for this type of character portrait, the deeply etched lines and weathered skin tell of his many years of toil out in the elements. The long in the tooth smile, with one tooth missing are a give away to his years on this earth and his humble origins. His headress has bright colours that would add vibrancy to a tighter shot.

As the shot is, the depth of field control has nicely thrown the background out of focus emphasising the main subject to good effect, it's well exposed with good saturation and is sharp enough.

Try a tight facial crop in you photo manipulation software and see which you prefer, to me with this subject, it's all about the face.

On, saying that look at his hands, these could well be the subject for another photo session, a close up using a chisel or other hand tool, again cropped tight with his hands as the main subject of the shot.

Thank you for your constructive comments and excellent suggestions. I will be back to his village next month and he is my favorite subject. I'll post more of Soo is a couple of months.

Try and post at something like 1000 x 800 at 300 dpi. This will then yield a sub 1mb image and easier for those (like me) on a slow connection.

Both, this one and the previous one of the girl are soft.

Maybe use a "standard" zoom lens, or even better, a prime ?

excellent study.......... a crop at the top of the pocket would be an option but then you loose the hand and the vee of the shirt ....... always more than one way of looking...... often i struggle with comparing one image over another which is kind of the same but a little different in some subtle way, just part of the fun of it, mostly i end up keeping both