When you have a sense of humor like Adrian Lees, you don’t need to wait until April Fool’s Day to have a little fun.

If you had met Adrian Lees, then entered his Paris real estate office for the first time, the experience would likely go something like this (except maybe in French):

You’d look around the room, taking in your surroundings until your eyes fell upon this old painting hanging in the foyer -- an expensively framed regal portrait of an eighteenth-century gentleman. You’d probably assume the painting to be an antique, perhaps even priceless…

“But wait,” you’d think to yourself, “That face… that face is familiar. Hmmm, the guy in that painting looks kinda like Adrian Lees…”

Then you’d glance below to read the inscription: Sir Jacob Astor Lees, 1776 - 1855

Now (if all is still going according to Adrian’s script), you would think to yourself, “Wow, could this be a really old painting of Adrian Lees' ancestor...?"

And now that Adrian Lees has you right where he wants you, that’s just when he'd enter the room. And how long he’ll play with you, letting you think that’s an old painting of his ancestor, well that probably depends on how gullible you are and how much fun Adrian’s having, messing with you.

Because that “ancient painting” on the wall is no painting at all; it’s a fairly recent photograph, made to look like an ancient painting.

Adrian Lees’ accomplice in this fun little prank is Michael Gilbert, fine art and portrait photographer:

Adrian told me that he wanted to hang a fancy portrait on his wall that he could tell people was his great-great-great-great grandfather.

So I went to the Louvre and photographed an old painting of a judge in robes and a big wig. Then I took a photograph of Adrian, using the same lighting, angle, and tilt of the face as the judge in the painting. Then in Adobe Photoshop, I took both faces and merged them together, morphing them into one face.

So most of the finished portrait that you see here – the background, the body and the clothes – are that of the original painting. In the final image, the only part that is different is the face, which is a morphed blend of Adrian’s face and part the old judge’s face.

To do that, in the image of Adrian (in the Adobe Photoshop program), I re-sized the eyes and other facial features so that everything matched up with the old judge’s face. Then I blended them together. The final image really does resemble Adrian, though not exactly. It looks just enough like him that it could be his ancestor.

To make the photographic print look like a painting, I used a product called Breathing Color -- they make the canvas that the photograph is printed on. I worked with some of their chemists on this, and they came up with reticulating lacquer, so that when you spray it over the canvas, the lacquer cracks. Then you rub oil paint into the cracks for an antiquing effect.

Happy April Fool's Day.

April 2 - 8 Michael Gilbert will be at Pacific New Media UH Honolulu to conduct a seminar on Large Format Printing & Black and White Digital Printing, an introduction to Niks software.

Other upcoming seminars with Michael GIlbert:
July 18 Fashion and Lighting on-location, Paris, France.
Aug 11 A Day in Burano with Michael Gilbert
Aug 22 Pro Photographers of California, Selling Your Photography in the Fine Art Market
For information, contact michael@pcop.net

For more cool portrait examples on Koloist from Michael Gilbert, go here and here.

If you're a photographer and have had an interesting experience during a photo session, or have done an unusual job for a client such as this one, please share! You can post a comment here, or click on "Contact" to email Ugo directly.