My late father

[Will Enns]

About 23 years ago, I was an ardent, if uninformed, photographer. I read books and learned, after a fashion, to take pictures. I thought it would be nice to have a good portrait of my father reading his Bible, which was a favorite pastime of his.

Little did I know at that time I might now want to paint from those photos, which of course, cannot be reshot. So I must be content with what I have.

I used an incandescent bulb as the main light, which accounts for the yellow tones. I didn't mind them as I was using the lamp you see in some of the pictures as a prop.

As you can see, the original pictures were cropped too small, so I have added a border to re-compose the pictures as I might like to paint them. Of course, I will paint only the best one.

By an absolute fluke, I lit a few of the pictures with what I think can be called Rembrandt lighting. I consider myself very lucky in this respect.

Here are my questions:

1) Which of the poses do you find most appealing?

2) I would prefer to keep things in the traditional portrait format. This leaves me with large dark spaces above and below. What, if anything, should be done with this?

3) How might the composition be improved upon? I'm willing to look at options that might not be obvious or very conventional.

I would, of course, be happy for any additional comments you might offer, beyond answering my specific questions. I much appreciate the time anyone might take to offer advice on these.

First pose:

[Will Enns]

Second pose, with lamp.

[Will Enns]

Second pose, without lamp.

[Alicia Kornick]

Will,

I love the first pose in profile. It is beautiful. I would crop the bottom and a little at the top and do it as a 20" x 24" with the 24" being the width. It has a more natural feel to it, whereas the other two look a little like they were posed. The first one, to me anyway, looks like you just walked into the room to say goodnight and there he was reading his Bible. Very beautiful. The lamp on the table I think is an important element, it is symbolic to me of the light of truth and love. This will make a wonderful painting.

[Will Enns]

Thanks for responding, Alicia.

Of the photos I took at the time, I chose to enlarge the one you suggested to a 8x10 in the portrait format, which I framed. It was wrong then, because I did not leave enough space behind his back. Even though you couldn't see the coat, the edge of the frame cut right through his ribs. Must have been painful. Certainly was painful to look at.

The lamp presents another conundrum. Its placement isn't consistent with the light source that lights the subject. At the same time, the lamp gives credibility to the yellowish tones that dominate the picture and give it the feeling of age. What to do with these contradictions?

[Steven Sweeney]

Will,

I think your instincts are correct. The first pose didn't work out for you because compositionally it's just very unbalanced. Too, about 80% or more of the head is in shadow, and what little is in light isn't dramatically lighted in any particularly interesting or characterizing way. I think the alternative 3/4 pose is far more revealing of characterizing detail.

I agree that the lantern is problematic as well, because as you've pointed out, the lighting on the subject is not the design that would be defined by that type of light source in that position.

You might experiment with variations of the 3/4 pose, with some light introduced in an oblique design in the right side of the background, indicating a high, off-site light source, which in turn might be slightly illuminating a wall hanging, simple painting, or other such feature (a Crucifix, perhaps (low-key, maybe defined more by shadow than light), which would be a "clue" that the book is a Bible). And that in turn would provide some compositional balance for the figure and the "weight" of the light on the figure and table.

Cheers,
Steven

[Tammy Nielsen]

Thanks Will, for sharing these photos of your father. I really like this type of lighting. I'm going to be taking some photos this week of a missionary with an oil lamp, and reading the scriptures. It was great to see what you did with your father, and the suggestions to use some more light for reflections, etc..

Tammy

[Mike McCarty]

Will,

What great images. I wish I'd had the opportunity to create such a powerful image of my father. In my opinion, the 3/4 (2nd) view is best. You have more information to work with in the face and I like the tilt of the head more than the more down looking pose of the first image. I also like the way the hand is described in the second image. But, if I'd only had the first image, I'd be thrilled.

I also think the composition could work without the lamp or any further explanation of the light. Much of the power of your image is in its simplicity.

I too am a compulsive cropper. I cropped your image slightly and made a slight change to that portion of the table closest to us. I hope you don't mind, these little puzzles are just too tempting for me.

[Will Enns]

Steven,

There appear to be two schools of thinking emerging on this subject - one led by you, and the other led by my wife.

Your logic demands that I should follow your advice, but the ring in my nose demands that I should listen to my wife.

"Women will probably respond better to the way I'm suggesting," she says. Alicia's earlier post seems to support this. "Women do more shopping, women do more buying," she says. "If you want to sell, do it my way," she says.

I believe I will have to paint two pictures to find out which of the two I should paint. And I think that is what I may in fact do. One to sell, and one to post here. That way, us logical guys won't have to lose face. (Those of us who have a face worth worrying about.)

Tammy,

Thank you for your kind words. I hope you can learn from my mistakes, and I'm sure you will come up with some striking images. I hope you post them for us to see.

Mike,

I've read many of your posts, and find each of them very informative, this one included. Of course I don't mind that you cropped. There is one question: You ended up with a square composition. Why would you do this, and how can you justify it from a compositional point of view?

BTW, the hand is patched in from the first image because in the photo as it stood, the hand was all wrong.

[Chris Saper]

Will,

What wonderful memories, and paintings to be treasured. Both photos will make excellent resources - go ahead and do them both!

I probably favor the selection and cropping that Mike has suggested. There are a couple of particular challenges that come to mind as I consider them.

First, with regard to composition: the square (Have you seen this thread on square compositions? http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...&threadid=1221) is intriguing to me. Should you elect this compostion, however, I feel that the upper right quadrant calls out for some balance. A couple of solutions come to mind. Have you seen Karin Wells's fantastic work, showing the name of the person behind the figure? (Karin, hope you don't mind...) Here's an example, but do look at all her work: http://www.portraitartist.com/wells/butterworth.htm. Karin uses this convention in an incredibly masterful way for compositional balancing. On the other hand, something as simple as placing your signature in the upper right may do the trick. (I am, BTW, passsionate about how important the signature placement is...as is everything else you place on your canvas, it becomes part of the design, so it pays to consider it carefully!)

Second, you have a lot of challenge with regard to values. Try holding your photo right up against a strong light to see whether you can "tease" out any additional values in the shadows.

Last, the photos present a color temperature problem. They contain no cool colors to counterbalance the powerful warms created by this extremely warm light source. Finding subtle places to place cools in the shadows may create some visual relief.

Best wishes,