looking at a half cut eye does not immediately invoke a plesant experience which the rest of the photo is intended to be. nothing wrong with experimenting but I would suggest a diifferent mood with this crop or a different crop with this mood ;-)
Thanks everyone for the critique. I'll keep all this in mind for the next time. As someone posted, I clearly need to master inside the box first before I venture outside of it. lol
Here's the main reason (other than trying to experiment with no obvious success) why I cropped this image the way I did. One thing I learned after looking at these pictures is I need to use caution when photographing someone with these kinds of glasses. Note her right (our left) eye and the distortion of the face her glasses caused. Clearly I need to reposition the subject, or remove these kinds of glasses altogether.
Since you have the glasses so far down her nose, why not take them off completely? They are a bit distracting bisecting her face like that. The lens distortion doesn't really bother me too much, it shows that the glasses are working.
You've got a more important thing covered by not having the lights reflected in her glasses. That's more distracting IMO.
The uncropped headshot is much better than your cropped/framed version. I find the cropping a little tight, but am not bothered by the glasses.
I would agree that it's important to master "inside the box," but putting a distressing crop in an ugly digital frame and text that looks like a watermark is not exactly thinking "outside the box." A similar headshot to your uncropped version, but a little looser would be a very agreeable image.
I really like the crop. It shows some creative thinking and I like that. Of course, you please the client with a convention portrait first, then you start thinking outside the box and get creative. You've done both with one shot. I like that. It will make me look at some of my portraits again and see if I can think outside the box like you.
