Aways follow the rules is what most of us have heard all our lives. Following the rules is probably good advice, most of the time. But in photography things are not always so restrictive. I would say we work more with what are called “guide lines” than concrete rules. We have heard “never center your subject in the frame” but there are many examples of great photography when that was the visual solution. “Don’t crop off any limbs or for that manner someone’s head”… well there are several of these well meaning advisory type suggestions that get told to photographers when they are first starting out, that are not necessarily rock solid truths. But, give a photographer a rule and they will find someway of breaking it and coming up with something new. The most important thing in photographing people is the connection between the photographer and the subject. That chemistry or connection, what ever you what to call it is paramount. Most of the morning we had been setting up the lighting, working with the reflections on the surfaces of high gloss black pianos. It was time for a break, and I decided to have a little fun and take a few production stills instead of having a third cup of coffee. I asked Jay, my subject in this image to turn around and as I lowered the angle of the camera he knew exactly what I was doing, no words were spoken and his reaction was what I had hoped for. He knew I was cropping off his head and that his face would appear as a reflection in the top of the piano at the bottom of the frame. I took a chance that Jay would know what I was doing. As I said earlier we had been working with these reflections all morning, that connection between subject and photographer was the shared experience of the morning.  I have always believed what Edward Steichen said “A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.”