I actually thought about you Tracy when I was writing my comment about, BRAVO! Is this your father?

Great exposure and metering here as well! Did you use a hand held incident or just spot off his face? That back light is so well tamed. And his palms are just illuminated nicely as is his neck - but still leaving the edge lighting on the neck as well. Technically very adept the more I look at this one. Not to belittle the subject matter.

@Richard - I rarely have time to meter my images, if I did I would miss the shot and I surely would have missed this one. As it happens I hardly had to do anything to this in PS other than convert to b/w so I guess I got lucky technically.

As some will have figured this is my dad, and no it was/is not an easy image to post or view.

When my dad was dying I thought about shooting him. I wasn't sure what the rules were. Part of me felt like capturing some final memories. I then decided to just stick to the memories that I had inside my head and leave it at that. I now keep a nice portrait taken of him by some specialist in the 50's or 60's next to my scanner - taken well before I was even conceived.

As to the technicalities - just awesome none the less. I also fail with back lit shots like this.

By specialist I meant damn good portrait shooter! ;-)

It is very brave to take and then publish an image of one's father who is ill. A very strong and meaningful image.

Doesn't say "Broken" to me so much as "Old" but why quibble on such a powerful image. Well deserved feature Tracy.

This is a great photograph.