A couple iconic figures

[Xxray]

MLK & Elvis, both came out nice.
Both around 8.5x8.5", both took about 2 hours using a .125 tapered ball nose.
Lighting pretty simple, just built a mdf box 2.5" deep, spray painted it black, and strung up a white LED strip in the back. These have controllers so the light can be dimmed or increased, flashing/fading effects, and of course on/off function.
Yes this is speckled corian, not ideal I know but all I have at the moment.

[ssflyer]

Looks good - you're getting them dialed in!

[Xxray]

Yep, I think that 1st attempt was doomed to failure due to bad exposure of the subjects.

MLK was optimal, no fears of black subjects now, will be doing Hendrix soon.
The Elvis I can see where I made a mistake choosing a subject with black hair against a black background ,,, But the face came out nice.

[ssflyer]

That's where your photo editing software comes in. You can mask any part of the image and get rid of the background. Also change contrast, exposure, levels, etc.

If you don't have good photo editing software, GIMP offers a lot of Photoshop's capabilities, but doesn't cost several hundred dollars - as in it's free!

[Xxray]

Naw, I'm an old school image editor with software, I have photoshop & corel but I mostly use photoimpact.
You can only do so much with drastically underexposed faces, whatever I did to lighten them they would have lost detail and ended up fuzzy looking, not worth the effort.

[ohiococonut]

Both of those came out really nice!

[Xxray]

Even more iconic - This one almost dropped my jaw came out so nice.
[don't ask me why the forum displays the pics sideways when clicked, always happens here no matter what I do]