portrait of the week: d'arcy

When I take portraits of people, I usually get in pretty close. Faces are fascinating, and surely the reason portraits are perenially appealing. Maybe that's why I struggle to determine an opinion on this image - I'm just not used to this type of composition. I definitely do like it, but I'm not sure how much and for what reason(s). One thing I am confident of is that it looks much better when enlarged - being able to really see D'Arcy's face enhances the image immensely - so click on it before making your judgement.

I took a lot of photos of D'Arc that day, and some of them are lovely. But I'm not sure he thinks so - he had been up almost all night working madly on an application for an elite filmmaking course (which succeeded! hooray!) so he wasn't feeling super photogenic - and here one of the benefits of the long shot reveals itself. Instead of looking overworked and underslept, he looks merely pensive and intellectual! And perhaps, instead of seeing someone wishing for a warm bed free of the deadline blues, we can look at him here from afar and imagine that he is hatching a brilliant idea for his next celluloid masterpiece.