Would you use this photo commercially?

[photo_chick]

Cute kid... but issues of lightness/darkness and skin tone aside, I'm not too wild about the composition. The right hand is cut off (I think the left arm crop is OK) and there's a lot of "dead area" at the top of the image. If you cut out the dead area the resulting image is too square for my tastes.

On of the things I've learned about the photo business is that people tend to way under-crop images. Getting rid of "dead space" is the quickest way to make a photo more appealing.

When you use it in advertising dead space is necessary sometimes. Places to put copy, logos, tag lines.... Though the "dead space" in this image is way too busy for that with all the bubbles IMO. You would not easily be able to read the type.

Again, I think it all comes back to what type of image the OP wants to portray with it as well.

 

[Geoff_M]

When you use it in advertising dead space is necessary sometimes. Places to put copy, logos, tag lines....

True, but from the OP's comments, I assumed that this image would be used as part of a brochure and therefore the image would likely be used as an image alone with text and details in the rest of the layout.