Trisha and her violin

[Mike McCarty]

It took two sessions to get everything seen here. Shot in my dining room with only window light using my film Nikon with Fuji 400 speed film.

[Mike McCarty]

Different pose from the first session. This could be cropped closer in, certainly up more from the bottom. I would look closely at this before deciding how much to include in the final composition.

[Garth Herrick]

Mike,

I love the first image, she is stunning.

I am wondering how you scanned your film into a digital file. Is this a flat-bed scanner? The D-max seems low. The shadows are full of banding artifacts from the scanner. I personally am limited to a flat-bed scanner and get similar results. As an experienced portrait artist, one can make an educated interpretation of missing shadow or highlight information, but it may be more advantageous to find a friend with a top-notch scanner. I call on my photographer friends for scanning help whenever I feel my flat-bed is not up to the task.

Sincerely,
Garth

[Mike McCarty]

Garth,

What you see is the result of a flat bed scanner, however, the actual prints are quite good. I take my negatives to a professional lab for processing and have them prepare the prints that I paint from. I almost exclusively paint from an 8x10 matte print, it's all I've ever done.

These images were scanned from a typical 4x6 print. I don't fuss to much with what you see here because I don't reference any computer images when I paint. I go to a little more trouble to create good computer images of my paintings.

Thanks for the compliment on the image, she was a very pleasant subject to work with.

I'm looking forward to the digital age.