Imnosaint
Adventurer
It's a perspective, though I constantly wonder if it's artistic. What you're seeing here in composing these shots is a design principle of closure, a Gestalt principle. The notion is that the viewer can fill in the blanks on cropping off the head, knowing full well that the rest of the head is there (unless we're talking about Hannibal).
My composition influences, the motivation, come from my motion picture background, documentary work where the talking head establishes the story foundation. Close is where the non-verbals start to shine, so I'd start with an establish shot (headroom, bust) and work to a close-up (top of the shoulders to crop into the top of the head to punch the eyes). it's the close-up where we find details of the soul. Were these shots composed cropping above the shoulder line to the neck they'd look funny, decapitated, and that only works in France. In fact, most compositions that crop at the human body's natural truncation (any joint; wrists, elbows, hips, knees) will suggest amputation more than it will art. Of course, there's an exception to every rule.
Contrast is the other big driver in these shots, not just in exposure, but in texture as well. All said, though, it's the faces that make these appealing, the expression, the structure, the backstory in their eyes. Save for the old guy, the rest were students of mine. I had the luxury of having a studio in my classroom and whenever I'd come across a student with unusual aesthetics, I'd ask to photograph them, plop them in the hot seat and fire away.
