Fur hat
by imantas

Comment:

Originally posted by awelsh: This one will ribbon. Stood out among the thumbnails as a striking, high contrast portrait, with depth to the lighting. Also helps the subject is easy on the eyes, which will always improve voting scores. In this case, however, this setup would make a portrait of me look good ;)

Good call.

Old warrior
by LevT

Comment:
I rarely comment on photo contests. I do not understand competition in art. That aside, awelsh made a comment below that I agree with. Get rid of the HDR in this and it would be a better image. It looks like it came from a video game right now. One other small point, the hand in the foreground is too large. It has the appearance of being larger than the head, which in fact it is not. Draw the hand back a bit, lean the subject forward a bit, problem solved. Given that fact that this was a candid snap though , the larger than head hand could be over looked, although I would hesitate to call this a portrait at that point.