Bad cropping?

[-Garfield-]

Hi, some time ago I took this portrait and I quite like it. I like it even more when I in error deleted all the images from the shoot. But here is the thing.

I really love this horizontal portraits with shallow depth of field and make just the model to stand out. I know the image should be sharper (for better image check it out at my flickr account) but I was trying to get away with ISO-400 and I should went with at least 800. But back to the composition .... Some people had complains about my crop of the top of her head. I like this look and the question is should I crop or shouldn't I? Do you like the crop or do you want to see even more cropped out?

BTW this isn't cropped in LR or ACR but this way it was composed in the camera.



EXIF INFO:
Camera: Canon EOS 450D/Rebel XSi
Lens: Canon EF 70-200mmL f/4 USM @126mm
Shutter: 1/60s
Aperture: f/4
ISO: 400
Flash: didn't use for this shot
Lighting: Ambient light only

[EOBeav]

My rule of thumb is, if you're going to crop something, REALLY crop it so that we know what you're going for. As it is, it just looks like a mistake. Also, IMO anyway, a cropped shot should be a tight one, with little or no empty space like you have here.

[cacorcoran]

i like horizontal portraits as well. IMO the missing part of her head is distracting to an otherwise good portrait.

[autofocus]

not a big deal...works fine for me. Look through photos in magazines and you'll see shots like this all the time, so maybe we can assume "they" know what they're doing. Just needs to be brightened a bit

[klam]

The head cropped off looks fine to me. I would try to crop it down to where the hair starts to part near the top to see what it looks like.