I have had many heated arguments over painting from photos vs. life. Frankly, I think that any good artist should be able to do both. That said, painting from life takes much, much longer to become proficient at. If you know the pitfalls of photographs, you can produce good work from them.

Besides, bank presidents and three-year olds have neither the time nor the patience to sit for a portrait completely from life. :)

I photograph in natural light only. I use a Mamiya 645 medium format camera mounted on a tripod. I use the lowest speed film I can get away with, usually 160 asa. When possible I try to use a reflector (which can be as simple as white foam board).

Obviously, very good results can be achieved using artificial light, but I don't want to become an expert on "one more thing". I try to keep it simple and portable.

When on the playground taking kid pic's I will use my 35mm Nikon for the mobility. I am not against using fill flash outdoors in some lighting conditions.

One more thing, as Cynthia suggested, take as many photo's as the circumstance will
allow.

And maybe one more thing. When the subject shows up with friends or other family members, and after the important work is done, I will always try and coax the other members of the party to submit to a few quick photo's. Once the painting is done, you can present the client with a quality 8x10 photo of their father or brother and suggest that this would also make a great portrait! If not, consider it a gift.

The following photo was taken with north light close to noon. I used low speed film with a soft filter(a whole nother subject). This is an example of a pretty good photo that could have used a reflector.

Here is the photo connected to the above post I made before "the troubles".

OOOH, I would love to paint this, too! I am in total agreement with the use of natural light...fortunately living in Arizona, there are only about a dozen overcast days per year, so it's a lucky environment. If I lived in any other area of the country, I would probably try to learn to use artificial light. Actually, here, I often have to fight the light..it is so strong and relentless, that even subjects photographed in shade can have trouble with sun squints.

I hope you will post the painting when it is finshed!

Chris

I am a staunch proponent of painting from reference photos as well. When I began using oils about twelve years ago I made my daughter pose for me, and the portrait, while a good likeness, was bland and flat-looking. Later I began using photo references and loved the spontaneous and fresh look I was able to get from my subjects with this technique, and I would never go back to working from life. On the other hand I carry a sketchbook to meetings and other places where I have to sit for prolonged periods of time and often sketch from life in those environments. I believe that in order to be able to paint meaningfully from photos you must have extensive experience drawing from life; otherwise how can you extrapolate from the sometimes very incomplete information offered by a photo, and how can you convey a sense of three-dimensionality if you've never sketched those curves from the three-dimensional?

When I do a posthumous commission I ask for as many photos of the person as the client can amass for me, so I can get a better sense of the individual I'll be painting. This fleshes the subject out for me and allows me to interpret his or her personality much better.

I have also painted from others' photos two other times, each time when the finished work was intended to be a surprise. In both cases I also knew the subject, very well in one case and somewhat in the other, so I could supplement the photos with my own knowledge. In the second case, painting our governor and his wife, the reference photo was old and I had to use my memory of him and some more recent photos to bring his face up to date. Otherwise I take two or three rolls of 24-exposure film of the subjects, outside in natural lighting, avoiding the mid-day so that the lighting is more interesting. My specialty is "portraits in a natural setting" so that environment works well for the finished piece.