Sandra

All of her skin is out of focus except the bridge of her nose, immediately under her eyes and the central part of her mouth. Consequently the texture of her skin is missing. Maybe this is intentional or because of a softening filter but for me it makes something about her seem masked. Her skin looks plastic not human. It is exaggerated because most of her face is fuzzy focus but the eyes, bridge of the nose and lips are in intense focus. If the entire picture was soft it would work better for me I suppose. But to intentionally soften much of the face and intentionally sharpen those 3 elements of the face does not work. The Venetian blind effect is interesting at first. It gives her face a kind of raccoon mask. But as I look longer my attention is actually pulled to the light stripes on her face and not the dark stripes. The eye is drawn to lightness. Esp the stripe across her cheeks and bridge of nose because that is the lightest stripe of all. But eyes and mouth are where my eyes normally go first. Those are the places of interest in a human face. So placing the shadow and light as the photog has done here is jarring and pulls my attention one way while my natural interest goes another way. I don’t like the way her mouth is partly in shadow and partly in light. I think the shadow over her upper lip should be moved up so her entire mouth has the same lighting. With such a small image area on the D80 sensor I question the wisdom of cropping the frame even further. This photo is an interesting experiment for me but ultimately it works better as a guide what not to do than the other way around.
Now I'll read what others have written.

Perhaps the reason Audrey Hepburn's photographs work so well is that she actually showed up, brought her spirit and her attitude and her expression, which reveals something of her heart to the viewer, to a collaboration with the photographer. That is sadly lacking in this model's death-mask expression.

One last thing and then I'll shut up. “Anyone can make a photograph of a face and call it a portrait. The difficulty arises in making a photograph that makes the viewer care about a stranger.”

Why blame the model if you don't like the photograph? Maybe she simply did what she was asked to do, whereas Audrey Hepburn probably felt free to be herself (probably what the photographer would want, and expect, from her too).

I don't blame the model. It was the photog who chose when to snap and he chose this dead-pan expression in doing so. I was responding to Fred G's comparison with Hepburn and thinking why one photograph works for me and another does not.

Kent, nice points. We're definitely in agreement.

Just don't overlook the many much more compelling pictures in this photographer's portoflio, as you critique this one.

Aha!

I've viewed many hundreds of images in my brief time on photo.net and my reaction to most of them is "Oh, that's nice- I wonder what post processing they used".

Not with this one.

This is photography, not CGI.

So often the composition of many photographs is "clever", or "arty" or in some undefinable way succesful only in putting the processing or the photographer's vision/ego in between the subject and the viewer. So often the pp seems to be the point of the image.

Not with this one.

Natural, evocative and indefinably eery, this is a photograph I feel anyone would be proud to have produced. And kudos to the model who is both a beautiful woman and a complex personality.

EXCELLENT, thank you!