Portraits, Knox County, Ohio
Carl Payne
Formal portraiture, taken seriously. Mostly.
I book no more than one sitting a week, which leaves room to give every portrait the attention it deserves*. Each image is meticulously hand-finished, one at a time. * Much of that attention is spent waiting for you to forget the camera.
The Company
Portraits for people who don’t quite fit the usual frame.
Musicians who need a press photo that sounds like the record. Writers who’d rather not look like a jacket-flap version of themselves. Actors, comedians, drag performers, anyone whose face is part of the act. Painters and makers, chefs and brewers, the professor with one good eyebrow, the occasional brave realtor. If you want a portrait that takes you seriously without making you behave, we’ll get along fine.
* A note to the Hill: I’m just downhill, with the lights on.
The Work
No. I to III
Studio portraits and headshots. Built light, considered faces, the formal tradition kept honestly.
The same formality, with exactly one thing wrong. Finding the hole in the ceremony and standing in it.
The unposed record: window light, sleeping weight, small hands. Evidence of a life, gathered gently.
The Sitting
One sitting a week. The session itself is unhurried. We talk, we play with light, we find the portrait. Afterward, every finished image is meticulously hand-finished before it reaches you.
Most commissions are a single finished portrait, or a set of five. Every sitting is worked out person by person.
Market price