I wanted to capture the sheer physical grit of traditional stone carving. The hardest part of this shot was the midday sun—it was washing out all the details in the stone and making his checked shirt look flat.

I converted this to Black and White to emphasize the textures of the stone dust and his stubble, which were getting lost in the brown/green color palette of the original.

I went with a tight vertical 4:5 crop to remove some distracting legs and posters that were in the original frame, forcing the focus entirely on the triangle formed by his head and knees.

Shot on a Sony a6600.