How can I improve this shot in PP?

This is an indoor candid shot taken today of a friend & neighbour during his first use of an iPad. I love the bewildered expression! I think the background in particular is poor, how could I improve this?

I have applied some mild PP in LR as the shot had some noise.

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nikonpup said:

bewildered. A joke or did you forget something?

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Sorry, don't understand your banter!

Top-hole. Bally Jerry, pranged his kite right in the how's-your-father; hairy blighter, dicky-birded, feathered back on his sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harpers and caught his can in the Bertie.

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i do not see a picture to comment about.

nikonpup said:

i do not see a picture to comment about.

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I was having trouble uploading the image. After losing my text several times, I then posted the text & then edited the post to add the photo. After several tries, it's now uploaded. Sorry for the confusion.

Maybe you can change the background some and make it less visible. Whenever I want all attention to the subject, I either change the background's luminance or desaturate it, or do both. With a radial you could also lower the exposure.

What is possible depends on which color range it affects.

J-see said:

Maybe you can change the background some and make it less visible. Whenever I want all attention to the subject, I either change the background's luminance or desaturate it, or do both. With a radial you could also lower the exposure.

What is possible depends on which color range it affects.

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Thanks, I didn't realise that I could do that. I was thinking of changing the colour of the background, but lowering the exposure sounds good.

Gorf said:

Thanks, I didn't realise that I could do that. I was thinking of changing the colour of the background, but lowering the exposure sounds good.

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A possible problem for luminance and color changes or desaturate might be the colors in his jacket being in the same range as the background. Then the only "easy" method is using a filter to lower exposure.

It looks like they aren't but it's hard to say without testing.

To add; whenever you partially lower exposure, desaturate to a degree too. In reality, the same happens with colors.

Thanks, I will try your suggestions.

I didn't think this shot needed a whole lot, really.

I dropped the exposure by half a stop, cropped it a bit (mainly to remove that distracting line on the left edge of the shot (there was a door there or something it looked like to me)) and brought the eye-line up to match the rule of thirds. Then I removed some stray strands of hair in the middle of his forehead, tweaked the skin tone ever so slightly and sharpened the shot just a bit. I only had a JPG to work with, obviously, so my power was limited. Still, here's what I wound up with:



....

Thanks for the tweak.

I agree that the door line was awful. Is it just me, or has the extra sharpening introduced a little bit of moire in the jacket?

Not only would I not crop this shot, I would also show part of the iPad. The expression on the man's face is priceless, but we wouldn't have known why he's making it if you hadn't told us.
I wouldn't change much else otherwise.

“I think that emotional content is an image’s most important element, regardless of the photographic technique. Much of the work I see these days lacks the emotional impact to draw a reaction from viewers, or remain in their hearts.”
Anne Geddes.

Thanks Blacktop.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the iPad in the shot. I had a second to get the one shot & was aiming for the expression, I forgot about the iPad. It's only another inch down - you can see the screen glow on his fingers. My crop only removed some space above his head & I tightened it on the left.

Gorf said:

Thanks for the tweak.

I agree that the door line was awful. Is it just me, or has the extra sharpening introduced a little bit of moire in the jacket?

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I think it's the nature of the pattern but to me, it dances more in the crop version.