Which photographs make a good likeness

Every sculpture we make begins with photographs, and the question we are asked more than any other is which ones to send. The honest answer is: the ones you have. But some photographs make our job easier, and a good likeness more certain, so it is worth knowing what we are looking for.

Three to six, from different angles

One clear photograph is workable. Three to six, taken from different angles, is ideal. A straight-on portrait gives us the proportions of the face; a three-quarter view gives us the cheekbones and the line of the jaw; a profile tells us about the nose and the brow. Together they let us build the head as a whole rather than guess at the parts a single photograph hides.

The photographs do not need to be from the same day, or even the same decade. Families often send one formal portrait and a handful of snapshots. We use the portrait for structure and the snapshots for the expression a person actually wore.

What helps

• Even, natural light. A face lit from one side casts shadows that hide half of it.
• The face filling a good part of the frame, or a large enough original that we can crop in without it turning to noise.
• Glasses off, if there are any photographs without them. We can sculpt glasses, but they hide the eyes, which is where most of the likeness lives.
• The expression you remember. A formal portrait is useful; the photograph where they are laughing is often the one the family wants to see.

What we can work around

Old photographs, faded prints, screenshots from a phone, a face in a crowd: we have made good sculptures from all of these. Resolution matters less than you would think, because we are not tracing the photograph — we are reading the structure of the face from it and sculpting that. A slightly soft image of the right angle beats a sharp image of the wrong one.

What we will tell you honestly

Sometimes the photographs will not give a good likeness. A single image taken from below, or with the face turned away, or a very small figure in a large scene, leaves too much for us to invent. When that is the case, we say so within 24 hours and refund you in full, and we ask whether there is anything else in the album. There usually is.

And nothing is printed until you have seen it. You see up to three design previews before printing, the first plus up to 2 revisions, so if the nose is not quite right or the smile is not theirs, we go again. The photographs get us most of the way. Your eye takes it the rest.