Dan took the reference photo of me at his house in their music room last spring. This room is also where I snapped the photo of Jim that my husband used for his portrait.
Look at the reference photo for my husband's painting, and you will probably figure out where I'm going with this story.
Notice the vase of dried flowers? Both of these photos, and the resulting portraits, quite coincidentally, ended up almost as two halves of the same whole image. (Offering a very bad Photoshop image to illustrate this.)
Dan took dozens of photos of me that day, some in their music room and some in his studio, and I love the fact that he chose this one ... and he unconsciously created a special connection to the portrait of Jim, which makes me love it even more.