For $50 you can have a personal portrait via FaceTime

mashable.com

8 points·ajg1977··7 comments

Or just send them a photo of yourself.

That was my first thought, too. Am I missing something? What does the live video (and "FaceTime", specifically) give me?

Can I call gimmick?

You could call it a window into your personality. A photo only gives the impression of what you look like.

If an artists sees more of you, such as in a video, he/she gets a sense of your personality (are you funny? dark? or perhaps in your case, cynical?) and can put a little more of that into the artwork.

Actually a portraitist could do more with this than with a photo. When someone works from a photo, what you tend to get is that photo, reproduced in paint. You can usually tell when a portrait is done from a photo because the subject has the sort of fleeting facial expression people wear only briefly in photographs. You could probably avoid that working from video, and get something more like you'd get if someone sat for you in person.

In that case, sending the portraitist a 3 minute video would be better? They could loop it until they are done.

Doing it asynchronously seems to be so advantageous. Can it not be done without sacrificing quality?

Yes, but there is a catch. If you do a video yourself, it may not show much of your personality. A good artist (or photographer) can get more out of a person through face to face verbal communication.

So Diy video, ok, face time, better, recorded videoconference, best.

I work with David. He has hundreds of people wanting portraits now. There's no way it's going to stay $50. Supply and demand. :)

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