>>3913296>>3913315Fuck it, here's a little experiment, i know it looks like i went and done it a bit with the cooking but the changes are a basic premise, i put the exposure a bit more than half a step down in general, placed an exposure embargo on the wall, upped highlights by half a step and (for my part of potentially ruining the shot) i blasted the contrast away on the background plane to add emphasis on the lad's figure, along with desaturating and balancing more to red those distracting magenta bags with a halo around them.
The wall now acts, for me at least, as a framing side and along with the background having its detail obliterated the boundary between both emphasizes DoF, the road's now notorious contrast in the reflections gives a richer texture and the man's figure is more prominent due to his more pronounced silhouette, hell i would've cropped some space on the right side but that would over the line for a "simple edit" already.
On an underexposed shot i would've simply upped highlights because lack of light/saturation would've probably tamed the magenta bags enough, the shadow recovery on camera would not have tried with the now-dark wall (at least if customized for it) and the floor would be naturally contrasty, maybe now that i think of it i would've still added some sort of mask on that background because lack of light would've made it more detailed thus distracting against the figure.
Of course, like i said previously, it's a matter of tastes or maybe calibrating a monitor.