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05/09/09 23:00 Filed in: Technique

Not a Womanwise story, to be absolutely accurate, the photo of Marjorie Boothman was commissioned to accompany a news feature item for the Sunday Guardian.
The sister of Boscoe and Geoffrey, mother of Michael, David and Roger, to name a few of her more famous children, I envisioned an image of Caribbean art nobility.

The reality of the Boothman's circumstances in Cascade wasn’t going to be supporting any of that. The main house was being re-roofed and Marjorie and her husband were living in a cramped annex bundled in with much of their furniture and art. There wasn't anything flattering in the space to work with, but the alternative, a lush garden drenched in pouring rain, was a non-starter.

So we return to the room. Time to stop looking at as a room overflowing with stuff and to start slicing it visually into narrower opportunities. Here's a wicker chair. There an interesting painting. Can we carve a little space to put a lightstand in around those possibilities? Some negotiation, navigation, and profuse apologies later, I manage to wean two tight portraits out of the situation. The Guardian runs just one of them, severely cropped.

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