people Jennifer

This is a reworked version I posted from Christmas. I softened the

background and added some vignetting.

I remember commenting on this one and also looked at Carlos' reworking which was quite interesting. Here my feeling is that you've gone about 2 clicks too far with the softening of the background. I like the distance that is created but it doesn't look completely natural. I've played around like this myself and it's always difficult to get just the right balance so that the blurring doesn't call attention to itself.

You have some good looking people in your family! I think Da Vinci would have enjoyed painting her!

Jack, it looks fairly normal to my eye.  I shoot a lot of head shots with the 50mm lens at f2 or f2.5 and the backgrounds are just as out of focus as this one or even more!  Look at this one shot the same evening with a 35mm lens at f2: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=18144707&size=lg  The backgrounds are pretty similar. 

Thanks Tony.  A lot of people refer to Jenny as someone you would see in a painting by Vermeer.   I guess she has a kind of classic, timeless look. 

Steve - I have done a crop and trust me, there are a thousand ways one can crop an image and no particular one 'is right'. Because of  her timeless beauty, here is a crop that pleases me. But, as i said no crop is perfect - it is a matter of taste.  Presented here just from another photographer's perspective and food for thought.

Nice Tony!  I often crop pretty closely myself with head shots and some people tell me to "give it more space."  My version is still pretty cluttered since it was a candid at a party. 

I compared the pictures and still think there is some difference between the two backgrounds. However, if you had simply presented either of these pictures without comment, I don't think I would have had any suspicions of background manipulation with this one at all. In the end it's more a case of confirmation bias than anything, I think. (although there is a bit of bleed-over blurring of her collar and edge of her dress on the left side. Picky-picky.)

Yeah, I could have blurred her collar a little less!