[Garth Herrick]

Hi Dan,

A great head! But you get half the credit for that anyway. I like the idea of this photo, but the extreme contrast really bothers me, because I can't imagine how a pastel would look as other than a derivation of a too high contrast photo. There seems to be some clipping in the highlights, but just borderline, so the information can still be drawn out. The shadow passages of the face are too inky dark for my liking.

I have reprocessed your photo in Photoshop using the shadow/highlight adjustment. With this I both increased the highlight depth, and reduced the shadow contrast. I bet there is more useable information with this modification, but you wil have to tell me if this looks natural or not...

Can you reshoot your son in softer light?

Garth