One has just to look at the two languages: Lisp is the veriest measure of rationality compared to AP̹̱͜L͎͓̼̟̯̰͎ (and so much less dense). It just helps to have a bit of OCD when counting parentheses…
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I’ve posted this at the old place already if one browses both websites, just FYI.
Okay, old problem that many of you know already…
Problem: I am trying to work as an artist in the least expensive way I know how, to live and paint in an apartment in Tijuana, Mexico. Selling anywhere, but primarily the United States.
My primary issue: An increasing number of people who ask me to paint for them simply want me to copy images they send me, a task which I find dull and disheartening (especially the crap photos).
I have little issue with subject matter, but I can’t seem to convince clients to just give me a little of their time to gather them together to take a photo of them in a natural grouping so I can have some room to be creative and original in composition and setting. I feel that this is a crucial component for building a repuation, so that people can have a good sense of my (now) developing style and artistic sensibility.
I want to know how some of you feel I could express this and remain steadfast without offending potential clients and losing business?
To be fair, a couple of my last dozen clients understand my struggle to try and elevate my art, but I really wish to figure out how to explain to the average person that copy work is not really helping me advance without offending them.
I’ve considered giving a steep discount as an incentive to let me have my way, but I still need to make enough to survive (which really ain’t much by USA standards).
I give you an example (I have no idea who this family is, but it’s definitely the most whitebread photo I think I’ve ever seen)…
And a pose I caught on my own of the neighbor’s daughter and her friend, from a high vantage point, relaxed and informal…
To be fair, I can’t do anything about the whitebread-edness of the family, but I most likely would have asked them to sit around that patio table in the background as if they were interacting with each other instead of the camera, so I could get an interesting grouping and some play with the shadows.
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I used to do a certain amount of portraiture, but I always insisted on a sitting, even if it was me taking photos to work from. My methods in that case were pretty simple: the camera was set up with pretty fair depth of field, I had a cable attached to the shutter button, with the cable’s button hidden in my hand, and I would talk to the subject(s), get a roaring conversation going. When I saw something characteristic of the subject(s) developing, *click*, and the subject(s) had no chance to pose for the camera.
The ticket to selling the sitting, though, is to point out what is in it for them: by visiting them in their normal surroundings and interacting with them, you get to know who they are, and that becomes part of the portrait - you can create something that captures who they are. A posed photo doesn’t always do that.
Put it in those terms: “I can create something that looks like you, or I can create something that is you.”
Your development as an artist is your business, not theirs. What they are looking for is a picture that holds an understanding and acceptance of them, and preserves that understanding and acceptance for posterity. That’s something you can quite truthfully offer them if they do things your way. You are appealing to their main motivation - themselves.
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Now, that’s really good.
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Where the fuck is “Needs more likes!”?
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I modified these a couple of weeks ago.
They’re intended to be derived from Tom Sachs’ Mars Yard Shoe v2, but since I don’t have the inclination to spend the loot for them on the second hand market, here’s what I’ve come up with. The originals look like this:
I decided that the detail from the original I liked/needed most was the boot straps, so I focused my efforts there. The color coding is a nod to the faux NASA storyline of the originals, and is, I think, an improvement on the originals.
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I like your version better. The blue/red gives it more character, and the black draws more attention to the boot straps.
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My mother-in-law has a painting in her kitchen that was copied from several different photographs, some of which were terrible school photos or psuedo-glamour shots. Everyone is either looking at the camera or staring off into space in different directions. It’s exactly like several paintings of photos on one canvas, not a portrait of a family – just hanging the individual photos would have been better. And your approach would have been much better 
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Oh, no!
Someone wanted me to do something like this once. They didn’t spring for a photographer when they married, so she wanted me to stitch together the good elements of different photos taken from different distances and vantage points. That plane never left the runway.
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Alternatively, I can just create something:
(@knoxblox I know you’ve seen this already, but others here should have a chance to appreciate it.)
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Yikes, yes.
It’s a very funny 'shoop, but I hope if someone is trying to malign the photographer, they find out soon enough before the news cycle drops the story. If she’s innocent, what a horrible thing to have to deal with regarding one’s professional reputation.
Related note…I’m quite often late with my work, so I hate to promise deadlines, but I’d prefer to admit I can’t paint something than turn out something that bad after a long period of stalling.
I’m under the impression that Sargent would abandon portraits if he didn’t feel comfortable with them, instead of plodding on.
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DOUBLE DOWN! NO RETREAT! Lol.
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That’s a level of incompetence that’s hard to believe, but, unfortunately, I do believe it.
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Just going to point there is no photos to compare to. So maybe the family were caught in an explosion in a botox factory.
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Ironically, 6 years ago I started a series of portraits using my usual tools of GIMP and Apophysis, with photos provided by the subjects (whom I already knew, mercifully) instead of sittings. An example:
If I recall correctly, the picture provided to me was something on the lines of 360 x 180, so, yeah, lots of manual retouch (with a mouse, no less! 
), otherwise this would have been a portrait from Minecraft once I blew it up to working size. In fact, so much manual retouch that I was glad I have a background in painting.
I don’t think the photographer in @teknocholer’s post knew what she was getting into, and I’m guessing that she made the boneheaded mistake of saving over top of the original files…
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No no no. Charge them 6 x the copy price for the custom work. Then you will get clients who appreciate you.
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I am an absolutely crap painter - a talent free zone that cannot even paint a door.
When I went to secondary school here our first assignment was to paint a group of people. My effort was dire. The art teacher gave me top mark and failed everybody else.
Because my people were facing one another and theirs were all looking out of the picture, and he had said a group of people.
I learnt that lesson but never came anywhere other than bottom in art again.
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I don’t know if you have ever seen Lord Snowdon’s portrait of John Betjeman? I can’t find a decent thumbnail even online.
Betjeman was a terrible sitter and Snowdon knew this. So he put him in a chair and started talking to him while fiddling around with a Hasselblad, making a big thing of taking it off the tripod and putting it back and so on. After about twenty minutes he said to Betjeman, OK, thanks, you can go home now.
Betjeman asked him when he was going to take the picture. “I did,” said Snowdon. [source - personal communication, not by Snowdon though.]
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