Hey Marcus,

Can you take a screen shot of the area that you are trying to change / alter?

Sorry, I thought I had.... here it is.

1. To hide the first section, you need to edit the workflow for your profile type and in the header field, leave the description as empty, http://take.ms/VrjAGu

2. The language string that you are searching for is located under /language/en-GB/en-GB.com_easysocial.ini

PLG_FIELDS_AVATAR_CROP_PHOTO="Select a section of your photo to crop and create your avatar."

Thanks Mark,
I'm gradually learning where everything is kept in Joomla!
how can I remove the extraneous colon if the field title is blank? (I've tried leaving the title blank but it pushes the check-boxes over to the left)

thanks
Marcus

Hm, ideally you shouldn't be separating the title into a different field as it isn't meant to do this