Is it me or my wife ? How "good" is this image ?

[ed1k]

I am second for the variant in post #22. That's the best crop, IMHO.

 

[Sisyphus]

I keep telling you it's the wife. My wife does the same thing, but I don't listen to her anymore. I would just stop asking your wife what she thinks, and just show your friends when she is around.

 

[myoptic3]

Fine shot. Good subject. But the B&W definately looks better, to me, than the sepia, and the baby's head in the composition looks cone headish. Either due to the composition or lens distortion. Worrying how others judge your work is not a good thing, wife, friend, or otherwise. The sole judge of whether the shot works or not is you.

 

[shadowfox]

Dan, the square format is definitely a 5.

Nitpicking a little, the contrast adjustment is a bit much for my taste. The rim of the baby's eyeballs and the mouth became too dark, my eyes kept getting drawn to them and I have to keep drawing myself from them to see the expression of the face.

... unless you're going for the "gothic" baby-look 😀

 

[KoNickon]

I think I actually prefer your first version -- sepia, not square. As for your last version, the eyes are too dark for the rest of the portrait. Definitely getting into "space alien" territory.

What is distracting for me, actually, is the expanse of adult skin at the lower left, complete with hairs. Your last version did a good job of deemphasizing it.

 

[bigdog]

Crop it!

Crop it!

Nicktrop is correct. This crop may be a bit radical but I like my cropped version ...IMHO. The eyes of the viewer are distracted by the bright corners and bottom of the image when the best part of the image is the infants eyes looking into the lens.