Keyboardface

I wanted to see how close I can replicate this nice shot of a person with a mech keyboard in front of their face.

 

Unfortunately the only person I had at hand was me and I had no dark background so instead I shot with as dark settings as was necessary to get the background at least somewhat dark in my small apartment with bright white walls. The f/8 was quite alright to get the keyboard out of focus without creating a complete nightmare for me to focus on my face. The original image was shot with a Sigma 50mm Art at f/2, which I don't have at hand, so the 85mm has to do.

 

In the end had to fix all that messed up exposure in darktable, so there's that. Then some fiddling around with curves in Gimp to get at least in the ballpark of the green tones in the shadows.

 

I'd rate this a 6/10 overall. I'm most frustrated about my completely black hoodie which retains next to no detail. Plenty of room to improve.

 

The lesson here is to get a dark background then I don't have to try and shoot through across the room.

Done