Midface ratio

The midface is the part of the face between the brow line and the base of the nose, and the midface ratio compares its height to the lower third — nose base to the bottom of the chin. The classical canon wants the two equal, so the reference is 1.0, and a ratio meaningfully above it is what people mean by a long midface. It is one of the more visible proportions because a viewer reads it as the overall length of a face, and one of the more misread ones because camera angle distorts it heavily: shooting from below foreshortens the lower third and inflates the ratio, while shooting from above does the reverse. The proportion is set by the skull and does not change in an adult. A hairstyle changes how much of the upper face is visible, which changes how the ratio reads without touching it.