I have always loved Vermeer’s images. I used have a copy of his Girl Pouring Milk when I was in school, and I first saw it in real life at age 17. I had to wait until 2 years ago to see the Girl with the Pearl Earring in San Francisco, where it was briefly on tour.
Erin Andie approached me about taking headshots for her last year, and offered to model whatever I wanted. I thought she would make a wonderful Girl with the Pearl Earring, so we set up the shoot in my home against a black background and using a beauty dish. It turned out so well that I thought it would be fun to recreate more of Vermeer’s work. So I spoke to some of my Photography friends at a christmas party, and wondered how it could be done. Myra Baldwin Theissen is a very talented Oil Painter and Photographer and she offered to help. So we recreated a lighting scenario like in many of Vermeer’s Paintings with a northern window illuminating a wall from the left. It took weeks to gather and assemble the props and for Tina Serneels French to make and fit the costume on Jessica Kisiel, a wonderful young model we had worked with before and who looked the part for the milkmaid. Finally the day of the shoot arrived, and Myra had fresh bread specially baked for the scene and the characters assembled. Photographic advice was also available from Dennis Ramos, another excellent FineArt Photographer member of our Photographic Groups we have shot with frequently. The scene was lit and we took our photographs having tried to carefully align everything like in the original. The scene was adjusted in Lightroom and printed.
I met Jose Gomez, another local FineArt Photographer who founded a group to promote Photographic Exhibition in local Galleries. Our group started meeting and many of us entered the Files & Film Annual Juried Photographic Art Show 2016 organized by another talented Photographer Lisa Scuderi. I had to print my two images about 20×24 inches and had them framed locally. It was a special moment for me to sign my first real Art pieces, and I was very surprised to have them both picked for exhibition and then to be awarded a Juror’s award and also the “Peoples Choice award” at the opening this month May 2016 at the Leslie Curran Gallery on Central Ave in St Petersburg where they will hang for a month.
We have continued to work on our series of Classic Recreations and now are ready to exhibit the additional pieces at a new exhibit we are currently arranging.