My Grief Will Never Leave...

Mourning my son's death has become a bit less intense now that we are in the eighth month since his passing, but the grief I feel about his death will never be completely gone from my heart. Those of you who have lost a child are about the only ones who will truly understand that statement, but that is okay with me.

With less intensity filling all my days, I have slowly started moving back to placing a focus on my photography. Up until now, though, the only decent images I have made have been at Lonnie's grave. "Tear Catchers" is one of my favorites:

"Tear Catchers" was made at Lonnie's grave shortly after his marker went into the ground in early April.

If you look closely at the image, you see not just the raindrops that fell on these roses that day, but also, in the "bowl" of each rose, a small puddle of rainwater -- a perfect metaphor for a grieving mother.

Options for purchasing (including framed prints, greeting cards, plus tote bags and throw pillows) are available for this and my other photos. Explore more and make a purchase by clicking on this link. 

The Making of a Cooperative Portrait!

Now what the heck is a cooperative portrait (I'm sure you are asking yourself)? Well, it is a description I just made up after working with a photographer who is newer to the craft than I am. I wanted an updated photo for my use on the web as well as, possibly, in print.

Brace yourself for this post! I usually aim for short, but this is going to go into some detail for teaching purposes.

When we met on Friday, Annie Clark decided that we could make a shot and just blow things up after cropping down to the head shot I wanted. I explained that we needed to shoot it the way we wanted it to turn out. The reason is that incredible amounts of quality would be lost if we had done it Annie's way as this shot shows the small section of an already small photograph that would have meant:

While this might be an OK snapshot as is, it is far from a formal looking portrait which is what I had in mind. I asked Annie to move closer, but she was still holding the camera in a horizontal fashion so the following shots were recorded:

Do you see how much of an improvement just moving in a little closer makes? As a matter of fact, for almost all of the photos you take, once you think you are close enough, take at least 3 steps forward and see if you don't notice a big improvement.

As a matter of fact, a famous Twentieth Century photographer by the name of Robert Capa said, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." 

On to the next point: Formal portraits frequently are taken vertically, or "portrait mode." I simply asked Annie if she would feel comfortable turning her camera to that position. When she did it, these are some of the images that resulted:

We tried some without glasses, then some with glasses. But reflections from uncontrolled natural light resulted and rather than work out that problem, I knew that we would be best just moving on. 

You may notice that the first 2 of these were taken with Annie holding the camera enough higher than my head to create an effect of looking down on the subject. Unless you want this as a creative effect, you are better off lowering your camera a bit so that you are more on eye level.

Annie took a total of 37 shots of me -- several more than I think she really wanted to! But I knew we still had not likely gotten "the" shot. In the end, we had and this is the straight out of the camera version:

Photo by Annie Clark

Not too shabby, right? But not finished to my photographer's eye either. After retouching this shot, this is the avatar you get:

And this is more the size it will be seen:

I told Annie that I would be giving her the photo credit, but once she saw the retouching, she said she thought it should be co-credit. Let me know what you think before March 1st. That is the day I will be posting it to my site.

Finally, if you would like detailed step by step instructions on my retouching process, please use the contact form on my website (jeanhendersonart.com) and reference "cooperative portrait." 

Take a look around the site while you are at it and give the gift of art to yourself, loved one, or friend!