The good news was that it was a commission. The bad news was the resource photo. I think that this is every portrait artist's nightmare. The client in this instance is very attached to this photograph and I am sure will take a lot of credit for the success of the portrait (if there should be any)

. The photograph was taken 15 years ago, so the models are too old to patch in information that is missing. Actually the skin tones in the photograph are not too bad and I think that I can work well with the heads and hands. But the composition??

I would really appreciate any help here - especially with cropping and background.