Does this look professional?

[Ginger Harp Seal Pup]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v385/ ... yscale.jpg

All I did was put a photo of me on Adobe Photoshop (an old blurry one that didn't really look too good) and messed around with it. I changed it to greyscale and messed around with the filters and this is how it turned out. I think it looks really professional but I want other people's opinions on it.

[kiay]

Well, not really, its kind of blurry plus the thing in the background (is that a window?) distracts from your face making the photo look unbalanced (in my opinion) That still looks kind of cool though, reminds me of those old photographs that you see in textbooks sometimes

[Ledi]

I'm sorry, but it lacks several things if you were going for a 'professional' look, and that's just on the art/filters side, not the actual setting up of the shot (I'll let a photographer go through that one...spent enough time getting chewed out about it in art class, but centering things is apparently a no-no).

A professional shot should not be grainy, blurry or low-contrast, things that your picture does not conform to. You can hardly see any of the features and on one side the hair seems to fade into the background.

The left hand side feature (window, whatever) really distracts from the face, being way too bright. In fact, most of the background could probably have been cut out altogether leaving a nice portrait shot. I've worked with retouching photos before (a lot actually) and I'm sorry, but this does not look professional. It looks like you've taken a photo and messed around with filters.

If that was the look you were going for, it would have worked. It has a nice 'mystical' and foggy quality about it, as if it were taken through a frosted glass window without the glare of the glass. It's not a bad tweak, just not one that would rate any form of 'professional' tag.

[Shifty]

Even though black and white pictures often look grainy, theres too much in this picture. Quality wise, it looks like it was cut from a newspaper and scanned. There's not much that could be done about the quality, but my advice is to make it a bit smaller, and add a plain border.

Position wise, the whitness on the side stands out too much... A few pointers, when taking a picture, make sure the window or light source is behind the camera, so that you are whats in focus. When its behind you, or on the side like in your pic, it sort of cast a shadow effect, which is why your hair blends in with the wall in the back.
Another thing is, it's too zoomed in, and you're too centered, it looks like a school portrait.

Hm, what did you mean by professional... Art is something people have opinion on. Something that is in a museum done by a 'professional' could be great to some people, and be junk to others. As long as you like it, thats all that should matter to you.

[Forest_Majesty]

There are a number of things you could do to improve it.
First of all: make a less distracting background- like completely plain. It looks a bit too blurry to be very convinving also, maybe make it look as though you are seeing the camera dead on- or even looking a little downward, instead of looking up and so close; like you took the picture. Other than that, the effort amazes me- I can't dabble with pictures worth anything
If improved, could be really good

[ahoteinrun]

Hm, what did you mean by professional... Art is something people have opinion on. Something that is in a museum done by a 'professional' could be great to some people, and be junk to others. As long as you like it, thats all that should matter to you.

I'm just going to say a few things about "art".

Yes, art is something people have an opinion on, but now a lot of what would be called "fine art" is something that has a meaning too it or behind it. There is normally some sort of reasoning behind it that has made the artist do it. Althought "looking pretty" and "beautiful" are indeed in their own rights, good reasons, even when an artist states this, there is often more behind it then just doing soemthing to look pretty.
Most art seen here on PPT (and i'll toss myself into this category) is illustrative and narrative. Which is totally awesome, but as art goes it's a genre that isn't often as explored as it once was by people who actually make their livings as artists.
And thats my mini spiel about art.
And as Shifty said, so long as it's important to you, and special to you, really that should be all that matters.

[Shoyru_Lover]

The photo is quite nice, I'm assuming professional as in professional photography?

The photo is blurry. You can try to fix this here by making the photo smaller to condense it a bit.

The background is also busy. You want to remove everything in the BG. You could do this in photoshop.