Those of you following on Twitter or Instagram (see the whole set on Flickr) have seen a version of this photo already. I spotted this man in a little shop in Hà Nội (Hanoi) painting these exquisite portraits. Yes, I realize he’s copying from an existing work. We learned that there is no copyright law in Vietnam. Whatcha gonna do.

Click to fill your screen with this photo!

I shot the original on a Panasonic GF1 in a custom B&W mode, but I shot it RAW+JPEG. I love the B&W JPEG files I get out of that camera, but in interest of consistency, I went back to the original color RAW file and re-treated it manually, in Silver Efex Pro II (as were the rest of the ones you’re seeing here).