Recreating a Painting (Photography)

For our latest assignment, we were tasked with recreating a portrait.  The portrait had to be a painting, and had to be from a known portrait artist.  I chose Gustave Courbet's The Desperate Man.  Courbet is an artist I was unfamiliar with, but the portrait immediately caught my eye.


I donned a white shirt and found a blue scarf, set up some lights and tried my best to mimic the conditions. I found the facial expression incredibly difficult.  Over 30 photographs were taken, some of the better ones are shown below.


I tried several different styles of lighting, opting for a duller, less bright light, which made it seem less artificial.  In truth, I found mimicking the expression, and the final one isn't great.  But I think the lighting is reasonably close, as is the composition.  I'm quite happy with the final image.


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