Yes, I meant to do it......and it's okay.....

Okay. I am putting this post up just to explain something. A pose that I do quite often (mostly because it is one of our most popular and biggest selling) occasionally generates this conversation.

customer: I just looked at our proofs and there is one image where my daughters head is cut off. Is there more in the photo than the proof shows?

Us: No...what you see in the proof can be cropped in further, but if her head is cropped then we meant to do it.

customer: Why would you do that?

Us: The image in question is what we call an "extreme close-up" of just the face. If we get the top of her head then the eyes will be in the lower half of the photo and it will look really dumb. It is okay to cut off the forehead if you do it properly and intentionally.

Here is a photo that always generates this conversation.
As you can see the eyes are the focus of this image and you are not missing anything by cutting off the top of the head. Compositionally...it just looks better this way. It is one of our most popular poses. Usually when I do this pose I also shoot a vertical image where the entire head shows, as in this image.
I assume by doing this I am giving the customer the option. If you do not like the super close-up then you have the full headshot to fall back on. The funny thing is that most say that they like the super close-up more. I think it is just so ingrained into us that cutting the top of someones head off is a bad thing that we can't look at the image with an open mind. JUST remember....if you like the way a photo looks.....don't worry about that stuff. It is okay to do that as long as it looks good. If you don't like it...then order the one with all of the head. Here are a few other examples of PROPERLY cropped images.