Lighting is Different

[Marvin Mattelson]

I'm flattered that my thumbs up or down would be so significant. My thumbs are no more or less important to anyone, except of course to me. ;-) Some may feel that when it comes to voicing my opinions I'm all thumbs!

Be that as it may, I'm just replying to your query. I feel that the lighting in those photos would be a detriment to you achieving your best result. The fact that your client doesn't like the expression is a good opportunity to give it another shot (pun intended). And while you're there, why not re-shoot both kids.

I think when it comes to kids, the fact they are now familiar with you pointing a camera in there faces, they should be more relaxed. I'm fully confident you will achieve better results.

Your work is quite lovely and I know that you will deliver the goods and have yet another happy client. That said, I think if we portrait artists wants to try a new approach and be innovative, we should do this on personal work. As professionals we have a responsibility to deliver our finest work and in my opinion it's inappropriate to experiment with a client and take the chance of producing less than our best work.

I don't know to what degree you can vary the appearance of a cameo formatted vignette portrait. I think you do as good a job as is possible from seeing what's on your site. Even moving up to head and shoulders is still fairly limited. The larger the format, the greater the opportunity for creating more unique compositions.

I use this fact to entice my clients to go up in size and since most of my clients seem to want me to create portraits that are also significant works of art, it works out quite well. The reason for this, of course, is because of the way I promote myself and particularly because I have portfolio pieces that demonstrate this.

If you want to provide innovative compositions, work them out on your own time, put them in your portfolio and reap the rewards!