[Mike McCarty]

Mari,

Personally I think #1 would be my favorite to paint. I get a little more of that personal connection with it. There is more info there than I have shown. I darkened it up a bit to get a little more drama, ok for photo's when you don't need to see so much. Black and white seems to allow a little more wiggle room than color.

My favorite, as a photo, would be #3. I love this one. It does demonstrate the outdoor trap of including more stuff into the composition which diminishes the head size. I think a very skilled painter could make a wonderful painting of this. I think I could do this if I painted it as big as Sharon K.'s seven-footers.

The following photo demonstrates very well why I don't hire out as a photographer. I was trying to work on my two person composition (not a simple matter) with Sheila and her sister. I had remembered Michael F.'s suggestions regarding adding a third element (light shade) to create the illusion of "3" instead of two. I might have pulled it off had I had not fallen into the amateurish trap of letting my auto focus take a perfectly focused picture of the center of the frame, which unfortunately was 4 feet behind the subject.