Paley’s 8th Portrait Movie *UPDATED*
* The video has been updated with new images.*
This video is a first for us, over the past 3-4 years the relationship between us and the artists process has truly blossomed. Artists have become more and more present on social media and so has their artistic process. Some artists will just send us shots of the progress over email but the more recently, artists have turned to Instagram and Facebook to share their process with the world. It’s a treat for us and now especially for the kids. Paley has reached the age where she understands the like process but still hasn’t grasped how the images are being seen all over the world. It’s really easy to gush over the number of likes a piece gets but seeing the comments and views is really the highlight.
The whole portrait commission process has become a secretive process outside of our little family. I’ve chosen to be mysterious because early on in the freshman years of harboring commissions, outside opinions spooked us or even changed our opinion of the artists vision. We found ourselves reacting negatively to these opinion, by asking the artist to make changes. Which to us was always the #1 rule of commissioning an artist, leave your opinions at home.
Sharing the portraits on social media, bread the habit of using the kids portraits as the art work for their birthday invitations. Then from there we started sharing little glimpses before the finished commission piece was revealed. This whole process has started to change ever since the twins were born. Now I have found the process has started to move closer and closer to their big birthday date. Today, as you can see from my Instagram feed, I like to post a little glimpses of piece in its evolution in abstract shots. Historically, the big reveal of the final piece comes after the invitation have been in the mail at least a week. The challenge lately with our crazy schedule with 3 kids is scheduling the photography sessions in a more timely manner. Typically our holiday portrait session shots are used to to the kids portraits. Sadly with the twins birthday in October and Paley’s in April, means Paley’s portrait is 8-10 months before her actual birthday. I’ve tried to play with timing but the reality is a new shoot for Paley will have to happen and another factor that is becoming a big factor is the artists schedule.
With the commissions being pushed out further. I am fighting my laziness and focus on the artist schedule more. (In all honesty, if you saw our family schedule, you would think I am a super scary anal scheduler) In the end, we work with whatever comes our way. For example the twins 3 year portraits weren’t actually finished till two months after their birthday because the artist was working on a really big publishing project. Thankfully we haven’t done a birthday party for them the last two years.
Now back to this movie! I figured it was time to build on this who social media sharing. In the past I just posted selected images of the artists process. I am working on a new video project for my 40th and so I am experimenting on the video editing. I had fun with this little video and hopefully you enjoy it as well.