I was inspired by The Singing Butler

I signed up for my Advanced Digital Photo Independent Study course for this semester because I wanted something creative and outside my comfort zone to work on. It was nice having a semester break to catch my breath, but by Christmas I was feeling unproductive. For anyone that knows me even  remotely knows that I am a productive person... but there isn't much to show for surviving holidays, touching up scuffed walls and the daily grind of family life. I needed something to motivate me to create, but I had no idea what when I started class a week ago and was hoping something would inspire me. I'm interested in documentary and travel/culture photographs, but they don't push me- I'm very confident in my abilities concerning that type of photography. Posing, setting up and creating a scene is where I hide in my bubble. Because I don't do anything small, as many of my friends tell me, I of course chose something time-consuming and not very smallish.

When I was a teen/young adult my mom hung a painting in her living room that has stayed with my over the years. Its by Jack Vettriano and titled "The Singing Butler".

I've always pictured this scene played out in real life, by whomever, and I imagined they would really be in love and that made me happy.

As I sat at my desk brainstorming ideas for my project I kept coming back to this image. I may not have a beach (or servants) but somehow I am going to reproduce this scene with real people and take a photograph. And I'm going to do that with other famous paintings, 20 total, which is going to be an undertaking...

If you have suggestions on paintings I can replicate, or want to model, let me know. If you think I'm crazy, let me know, but give me some other ideas while you're at it!

If you want to learn some interesting facts about this painting and its creator you can visit http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/07/jack-vettriano-singing-butler-art
I really enjoyed this paragraph:
"At least Vettriano skeptics cannot accuse the prolific artist of sloth. “I like to look at a painting and see labor,” notes Vettriano, who usually works from photographs he himself has staged and shot. His virtuoso effects of moisture and light on flesh, sand, hair, and metal, which often recall the look of vintage Hollywood movie posters or pulp-fiction covers, are accomplished by dragging a small stiff brush through semi-dried, still-tacky pigments—a technique he modestly likens to blending makeup. Not surprisingly, Vettriano venerates the Ruskinian craftsmanship of midcentury American pinup master Gil Elvgren and, “dare I say, Norman Rockwell.” For Vettriano the idea that his easel paintings, which cost between $48,000 and $195,000, are more accurately classified as illustrations is meaningless. “I don’t make a distinction between painting and illustration, and we shouldn’t get hung up on arguing the difference.” He is more acerbically opinionated about the conceptual approaches of such acquisitions-committee darlings as Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, both of whose hands-off methods he considers “morally corrupt."