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Old 04-16-2003, 08:04 PM   #4
Michele Rushworth Michele Rushworth is offline
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In addition to the very real copyright problem mentioned in the last post, it sounds like there are too many things you have to change to make these photos worth using.

Changing the belt, adding fingertips that you can't see in the photo, etc. will make things tougher for you than having reference that is perfect the first time.

You mentioned that the original photos are very clear. If they are anywhere near as soft as what I see here, I wouldn't use them. Do you have closeups of the hands? That would be important to have. Shooting closeups of faces and hands is a key part of every photo shoot I do.

You could easily recreate the pose and lighting and reshoot these yourself. You'd learn a lot about setting up photo shoots by doing that, too. Even though these were taken by a professional photographer, I think you could do better yourself and the learning experience would be well worth it.

However....if you want a great sample "for promotion", as you said, here's what I would do instead:

Make the perfect standard portrait sample, one that will get a lot of clients' attention. What I'm about to describe to you is what almost every portrait artist gets asked to paint, and will draw in the largest number of inquiries. This is assuming you want to do children's portraiture, which is two-thirds of the portrait market.

Borrow a friend or neighbor's adorably cute four-to six-year-old girl. Much younger and she won't hold a pose for you, much older and she'll be past the cutest age. Offer her mom an 8x10 photo of the completed painting as a thank you. (Of course, she may buy the painting, which would be ideal!)

Put the little girl in a classic, simple white dress with a white bow and bare feet or simple but pretty shoes. Pose her next to a window with no other sources of light. Position yourself off to the side of the window. Shoot a hundred or so shots of her. Go for an introspective but pleasant expression, not a big grin.

Don't change your position at all once you start photographing her. This is so you can combine hands, faces, etc. from different shots. Shoot lots of closeups of her hands and feet and face. Zoom in rather than getting physically close to her so you don't have distortion from the wide angle setting on your camera.

Do a bang up job of painting this and plaster it all over your promotional materials!
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