100-year-old artist and portrait phobia

Update May 2009: The image at the bottom won in a photo contest and is hangs in a gallery in Fairfield, CT.

The 100-year-old artist I photographed recently was perhaps the most reluctant photo subjects I've come across. Her aide warned me as I walked in the door.

Glenora Richards is famed for her beautiful miniature portraits, complete paintings just a bit larger than a book of matches. She still creates them, without the use of a magnifying glass. Dozens of them -- each one exquisite, some perhaps created 70 or more years ago -- lined her living room walls.

"I look like a rhinoceros!" she yelled after looking at a head-and-shoulders image of herself on my LCD.

Her aide said, "so why don't you smile? You'll look better!"

"You try smiling when you have no teeth!" She had a point.

Another challenge was that I was reluctant to ask her to move from her chair, since she looked pretty comfortable there, and hey, she is 100 years old. Gotta respect that.

Richards is a great conversationalist, and her winning personality, plus my professional pride, had me trying to figure out how to get three different images, given the constraints. I knew the newspaper had planned a lovely feature on her, and figured they'd need three: One for the lede, one for the jump, and one for insurance, in case they were lucky enough to have a bit more space in that day's paper.

After Richards rejected yet another head-and-shoulders image -- a go-to composition -- I started looking around the room and spied a poster on the wall. It was an enlargement of a magazine cover, featuring a seated young woman with her head resting in one hand. Miniature paintings decorated a table in front of her.

"Is that you?" I asked.

"Yes," she looked up.

"Do you like that picture?" I asked. The picture was likely taken nearly 70 years ago.

"Yes, I do," she beamed.

"So let's recreate it, OK?"

She loved that idea, and I asked her aide to help me set it up. The aide directed me to a TV tray in the kitchen, and I set that up in front of the artist's chair. I asked if I could bring over some of her paintings to place on the table, like in the old poster. She agreed, and I used some tissue boxes and salt and pepper shakers to prop them up. I asked her to put her head in one hand, like in the poster, and she did. We got this frame:





The second picture was easy. I asked her to hold one of the miniatures -- a painting of her late husband, when he was in his 40's -- and I snapped a detail shot:




I got the idea for the third and final image while I was taking the detail shot. I noticed I had to position myself carefully so as not to get a reflection on the glass of the miniature. I figured I'd use that type of reflection in the next shot, which took only a moment -- with careful attention to positioning -- to compose:




Happy 100th birthday, Mrs. Richards. I hope I get to photograph you for your 101st.