Tony, thanks for the reply. As to the technical details of the film, you can't tell from the jpeg, but it is from a high quality scan, and anyway, I've printed the original neg--and the grain was noticable on an 8x10 from a 645 neg. That would not necessarily be bad, but the Ilford SFX doesn't do anything interesting for me with portraits besides giving high-contrast and big grain--the tonalities are really not that different from a normal b&w film (ilford delta) with the same (#29) filter.(posted 8395 days ago)Part of the purpose of this roll was to see how SFX did for portraits, but that was not the main purpose.
As to the aestheticism of the image, my thoughts are that the flat lighting doesn't do anything good for the image. I think maybe the two things I was going for in the image probably conflicted--the purpose of the shirt is to show his athleticism (this would be shown by other frames on the roll that I haven't scanned), but the pose, at least how I see it, and was trying for, emphasizes personality more than form.
Oh, and Ed is a medium distance runner, which explains his physique.