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Reference PhotosThis page discusses how you can choose, or better yet, shoot good reference photos for your portrait commission to Yasuro. Before we go into details -- do you already have a portrait photograph taken by a professional photographer and want him work from it? Great! Because in that case, the photographer must have solved most of the common problems for you already. You do not need to read the rest of this page, perhaps except this subsection. If not, please read on. There are a couple of things you want to keep in mind before you start your search:
We will look at them below one by one. RetouchingSo you have found a few great photos, to which you want to give some fine retouchings --- Please do not! ... unless you really have to, for example, in order to crop out some sensitive objects that you do not want us to see. We would like to see the photos as raw as possible. Please do not even try to manipulate the colors. CameraSome people have asked if those photos have to be taken with high quality cameras, such as single lens reflex (SLR) cameras, or top-of-the-line digital cameras with five megapixel resolutions. The short answer is, "No, not necessarily". Of course, the better quality photos, the beter; but for the reference purposes, composition, lighting, etc., which we will talk about shortly, are more decisive factors of the quality than the quality of the camera itself. Old-fashioned 35mm point-and-shoot (analog) cameras could produce great photos, by proper handling, or by sheer luck. We used to use a 1.3 megapixel digital camera, and we were generally happy with the resulting photos. The built-in camera of your cell phone might be able to capture a great moment too. If you are using a digital camera, please try to use the maximum resolution that it can handle. CompositionIf you have a specific constraint on the size of the piece, then you will want to talk with the artist about it first. The reason is, if the paper size is not large enough, then what it generally means is that possible compositions will be limited. Since it is a portrait, not a general painting, people want to see the face of the sitter depicted with great likeness. To have great likeness, the artist needs to put a certain amount of detail in the face. This requires allotting a decent amount of space for the face. If the paper is not large enough, there will not be much space left for anything else. This is especially true with group portraits. By the way, if you would like to have a large piece, then you will be free from this restriction on composition; however, you will have to think about the shipping method also, if it needs to be shipped. LightingThere is no overstating the importance of proper lighting. Change of values (from dark and light or vice versa) is what gives the viewer an illusion of volume. If the lighting is poor, you will not get much range in the value change in the photos. Paintings made from those photos will look flat. Use of flash is undesirable either from the same reason because it tends to flatten out everything. Instead, photos taken under daylight are ideal, as long as they are not over-exposed. Pose and Facial ExpressionThis should be rather easy to understand---pick (or shoot) photos that capture the sitter's personality (or an aspect of it that you want to have in the portrait), in the pose or in the facial expression. It is, however, not easy to take such photos. In the presence of a photographer, people tend to get nervous and act unnaturally. One way to compensate for this is to take photos incessantly while you have the sitter be engaged in some form of activity and have him direct his attention to that. You can just have a chit-chat with him, for example, or you can think of something more complicated to keep him busy. You will have to keep on doing it for a while till the sitter starts to forget that you are taking photos. Wait till the spontaneity kicks in. Use of a digital camera is a good idea here because you will not have to worry about the cost of films. Other Personality Strengthening DevicesJust as there are specific physical poses or facial expressions characteristic of the sitter, there are others that are strongly tied to him, either in your mind, or in his mind. Specific clothes could be one. There might be a specific object or two. For example, suppose you want to commission a portrait of your father, who was once a great baseball player. You might want to get him dressed in a baseball uniform, make him have a ball and a bat, and have a trophy he earned before in the background. Inclusion of such in the portrait could strengthen the sense of the personality. Combining Multiple PhotosMore than one photographs can be combined and integrated into one painting. For example, one for the sitter, one for the particular object, and one for the background; or, if it is a family portrait, one for the dad, for the mom, one for the kid, and one for the background. There are, however, complications to this. The major problem is that those from different photos have different light sources. As we explained above, value changes from proper lighting is what gives an illusion of volume. If you just combine them as they are, the resulting painting will look odd and the viewer will get confused. To compensate, the artist will have to do some mental ray-tracing, and paint the sitter(s) and objects as if they had the same light source. It would help greatly if you could provide an extra shot, with all the things in one single frame at the same time, even if the facial expressions or poses may not exactly be what you want. We have seen some portrait artists do the combining by simply painting as if all the objects were under an overall diffused light. It sort of works, but the painting will lack the feeling of depth or volume. What Other Portrait Painters SayHere is a list of what other portrait painters say about good reference photos:
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