The picture was taken in the main carpet fabric of Fès, Marroco. All the carpets are made by 8 to 10 year old girls working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. The boss added that "only young girls can work on these machines because only small hands can meet the required dexterity".
The most expensive oriental carpets you can buy worldwide come from here.
I suppose you can't go any lower than this, because I'd have given that a try because that may give a more dynamic angle. But I can imagine by going lower means that the face of that girl would've been blocked by her colleague.
About cropping this, I wouldn't too. With this full frame the context narrates to the viewer the story. When it gets too tight the story would be lost. As it is now, my eyes immediately locks into the face of the girl, and then slowly moves away to the fabric works on the left of the frame.
TEchnically, the focus seem to be just behind the face of the girl, but I won't fault this, I can imagine that the workshop is much darker than this.
Thanks for the comment Andrew. I tryed different crops on the left, but finally I reverted to this one that is I think the strongest. The line on the lower left corner is interesting, and when broken, the image is more difficult to read. Also, I like To give these gigantic machines 2/3 of the space in the picture, whereas the girls only had very little space to work with, between the machine and the wall.
The lighting was really poor, and hopefully I could catch the middle girl's pleasing expression to focus on. Only lighting was a plain old bulb above their head about 1.5 to 2 above, and that's it. The other problem was to take the picture when the boss of the fabric was not looking at me so it had to be quick !
Yes, all too sadly there are places on earth where child labor laws are non-existent. I really like the composition, but I think a tighter crop taking out some the empty space on the left side would be a bit more effective. It must have been extraordinarily dark in there to have been only able to an exposure of 1/30 and f/1.4 with 800 speed film. Good job getting the shot under such circumstances.
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