Center Frame Portrait

A portrait of two people standing together and smiling inside a room surrounded by stained glass windows and panels. On the left is George Whitehill, an older man with a shaved head wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt. On the right is Jay Whitehill, a woman with long reddish-brown hair wearing a black top and a small pendant necklace. Behind them are wooden-framed doors and windows with colorful stained glass panels in red, yellow, and blue, along with a decorative floral stained glass transom window above the door. Natural light filters in from outside through the clear windows.

I wanted the environment to say as much about them as their expressions do. Jay and George have filled their home with stained glass they’ve collected and made over the years, so shooting them framed inside it felt more honest than a posed portrait somewhere else. The colored panels surrounding them — reds, yellows, blues — cast this warm, layered light that you can’t really recreate artificially. I kept them centered and let the background do the storytelling.