It is just some black velvet material, but with no light falling on it.

Thank you for your comments.

The more I see this, the more I'm really liking it. It grows on you, like stubble.

How the hell did you get Ed Harris to model for you and what did you pay him?

Looks the same to me.

 FABULOUS IMAGE, VERY CHARACTERFUL.LIKE THE CONTRAST AND HAVE YOU GOT MODELS PHONE NUMBER?

Thank you.

Sorry, can't post his phone no. on here.

 Good portrait, well posed, good costume, pro lighting, teensy bit over- sharpened ?,not my winner.

 & as for Woody's Wermacht guard with a sniper's rifle ?????-----VERBOTEN!! ERZATZ!!

Interesting comments, Harry.

 As for pro lighting ?????

One side - window, the other side reflector obtained free from a magazine subscription.

Some pro!!!

If we are talking about the same one, she's my winner too!

As for the oversharpening, it was deliberate.

Oversharpening for print is actually a technique that can work quite well. Screens are funny things of course...!

Great image, not that I'm allowed to have any opinion about our finalists of course.

Well, that's telling me then.

Actually, agree with all your comments regarding sharpening, but in this case, I just thought it was part of his character and profession, rugged.

It's actually quite refreshing to see what people think as I only have a rather primitive screen and it looks OK on mine, but probably on a professional screen it looks horrendous.

Thanks for all your comments in any case.

 Still happy that I'm a finalist - someone has to be last!

Well I'd imagine a full size uncompressed version with a lot more pixel information in it (than a 500x373px compressed jpg) would benefit from sharpening. I don't have a particularly decent screen here to be honest, and if it's over-sharpened then it's not offensively so. It becomes pronounced when, say, a glasses rim has only 1-3pixels worth of width to contend with, as compared to the 10-30pixel width it may have as a large uncompressed original (for example). 

I suspect there are as many sharpening styles as there are photographers. Possibly more, with some using two or three different sharpening methods according to where the photo is going to end up, the subject matter, the effect required, time of the day, whim, camera resolution, wind direction and so on.

We'll be covering sharpening in an upcoming section of Mike's Photoshop epic, but in the meantime... why not let us know what you use and why.

I'll kick off with a controvercial one, that's good for subject matter like this:

Go to Unsharp Mask in Photoshop. Set 'Amount' to the max (500%), 'Threshold' to the default (zero) and start with the radius at its lowest setting (0.1%). View the image at 100%, centred on a contrasty part of the image (eyelashes and stubble are perfect, as long as they are in focus).  Now increase the radius by 0.1% steps until you get clearly observable haloes (usually around 0.4% or so). Then knock back the radius by 0.1%. This gives a sharp and contrasty portrait that stays just the right side of oversharpened. It doesn't work for many subjects and it's hopeless for non-people pictures, but I've found this works for this kind of subject specifically. I use a far less 'odd' sharpening routine for most work.

Now, tell us your sharpening secrets. It might be worth kicking this off in a separate thread, though. I don't like hijacking threads, even when I do it.

 Ed harris ? Is he still around ?

The detail is amazing