'Rita in Black and White'

This is friend and model Rita. Your ratings, critiques, and

observations are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly, very

critically or wish to make a remark, please submit a helpful and

constructive comment; please share your photographic knowledge to

help improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! john

My personal sense of composition is that you ruined the photo by cutting off the top of her head.  We become desensitize to that by watching too many wide screen format movies, but the portrait should include all of her head and leave a margin above the top, for good measure.  Have you ever seen a head-shot of a movie star so shown on a magazine cover?  The pose is good and your leaving more space on the left is in excellent agreement with her gaze.  

Jerry

You raise an issue that was first raised in 1994 -- my first year of shooting and posting on Photo.net

A member said in comments (still available under my portfolio) that I shot pretty good, but that I ruined all my head shots by cutting off the top of the head.

I said that was interesting but I only seemed to do so I the case of closeups, and in distant shots I seldom or never did so.

Since then there has been research that shows that human babies recognize faces at an amazingly early age - that even smallest of infants have an innate ability to recognize the facial characteristics of their own mothers that never before was recognized.  It is projected that this ability beside being innate continues through adulthood through the end of life (providing vision remains).

I think it's true, and for my photos, despite two comments (yours and the other member's from 1994) making complaints about 'cutting off the top of heads in portrait settings, I have decided that's exactly what I'll do.

Believe me, I gave and have given his advice plenty of thought over the years, and do not denigrate your well-intentioned advice and even know that for you know this shot is indeed ruined, but for others, I think they may fixate on the face and the rest of the head above is of far less compositional significance.  I may be wrong.

I am hardly influenced by how others would handle a portrait such as this than how I want to do it myself. 

I do agree that the sideways gaze, however, is in agreement with the extra spacing to the left of the frame, and think that observation is well grounded.

I do not denigrate your advice either about head tops -- I've given that advice from 1994 great and careful consideration over the years since, but have decided that with only one note since 1994 (and now two), that it was not a great problem. 

That tendency does not appear in my more distant shots as I do not cut off head tops in such circumstances.  I think it is a device I use to get the eye to focus on the face alone, not on the head shape, and to keep the eye from wandering to the background or focusing on the hairdo, if you forced me to explain. 

Interestingly babies only recognize their mommies' faces when they're presented 'right side up' and cannot recognize them in the opposite orientation.

If there were a wonderful or interesting hairdo, the case would be quite different, but in the post processing of Rita's very blonde hair, I went to lengths to keep it more as a halo than as hair that one could focus on.  In other words, it is an envelope around her head, rather than hair on which one would be able to focus on.  I think its lack around the top of her head or anything at the top does not detract, but that's for viewers to decide.

I'm interested in what other viewers have to say, now that nine years have passed and the issue's been raised a second time, which to me suggests (in 16,000 comments since) that it is not an overweening source of discord, but I may be wrong. . . .

Others?

john

John (Crosley)

(and thanks for letting me know of your discomfort -- maybe this photographer has no clothes, nobody's been wiling to say, and now they can by my giving them an opportunity here.)

jc

....and the first creature a stork hatchling sees becomes its mother but that too is neither here nor there.

I did have a point, and I think I made it.

I think the facial features count for far more than head shapes.

I prefer the discursive sometimes, as it's far easier to make a point and have it stick without resistance . . . something I learned from my days of lawyering.

Your put-down gets points for cleverness, but nothing else.

john

John (Crosley)

No "put-down" intended. Just a thought that popped into my head after reading your reply to Jerry. Should I rather have written "I agree with Jerry. You ruined the photo"? Suffice it to say that by now you know this is not a great photo.

You should read what you write more closely.  The put-down was clear in the words that you wrote.

It does not purport to be a 'great' photo, though I think I have produced a few of those from time to time, some that have gone unrecognized by me until they have been posted.

Some of those 'great' photos might never have seen the light of a computer screen unless I had the freedom to post all that I felt like posting without fear of ratings, high or low.

One of my most acclaimed photos, for instance, I was fearful of posting, and my most-viewed photo with over 1/4 million views to date is blurry and I thought would get 3s for ratings and be roundly denounced, but instead was picked up by blogs everywhere and reproduced widely.

I learn a lot from posting, and sometimes from what I think may be a mediocre or even poor photo, I am surprised by the acclaim.  One photo I keep in a decidedly 'lesser' photo I am almost embarrassed of it was taken in just a thrice, has bad colors, expresses a simple but apparently profound idea (to some but not me) and scores well into the sixes, but I keep it isolated because it does not please me.  It shows up on highest rated lists, however.

I'd show this one before that.

In a few words, my taste counts for something, and viewers rates count for something else and when the two coincide, that is when I give the ratings and critique system high marks, which is why I keep posting.

And you have helped from time to time, despite some rather erratic comments from time to time, and for that I have been thankful, especially your instructions and sharing about tonalities (look at the histogram on this one if you doubt me.)

john

John (Crosley)