Making of: Mom as the Afghan girl from National Geographic

Ok let me provide the list of odd circumstances that led to this:

1. Since the whole family was together for Christmas, we planned for me to take a bunch of family photos. Naturally we couldn't possibly do that in a normal way. Instead, we wanted to recreate some famous photos and photo types.
2. We've had a set of pink gingham ornaments on our Christmas tree since time immemorial. My mom got the back in the 70's, apparently. This year she threatened to leave them off the tree and there was nearly a mutiny. As a result, this sort of became the "pink gingham Christmas."
3. Aaron and Adam and I all have clear memories of getting the "evil eye" from Mom on occasions when we were bad as kids. It was a piercing stare.
4. Mom mentioned to me that she had procured a pink gingham scarf for Christmas.

That's when it all came together: I needed to shoot my mom, giving me "the look", wearing the pink gingham scarf, like the Steve McCurry photo of the Afghan girl from the cover of National Geographic. This one:I told my brothers about the idea and they affirmed the uncanny resemblance of "the look", so I printed out a copy of this photo and brought it with me. I sort of hid it away because I knew if my mom saw it, she'd try to act it out, and I really doubted that would work. Then time flew, we did a bunch of stuff, it was a nonstop flurry of activity, etc. I forgot about that photo. The day I was to leave, I checked my flight a couple of hours before I was to leave for the airport and realized that the flight was a couple of hours earlier than I thought it was--which meant I had to pack and leave for the airport in about 30 minutes. Yikes. While packing, I found the photo. I could NOT let myself leave without getting the shot, but I had literally 5 minutes in which to do it. So here's what we did:

1. I studied the photo for lighting; available light was certainly appropriate (good thing, because there was no time to set anything up anyway) but we needed a big window to get the right catchlights in the eyes.
2. Had my mom change into a simple black top and get the scarf.
3. Set a chair next to the big window in the living room. This required a quick move of the Christmas tree--I couldn't move it too far so I squeezed in between it and the wall/window to get the right angle.
4. Sat Mom down, got the chair at the right angle, and dressed the scarf.
5. I needed a green background. Brothers to the rescue--they held a green blanket up behind her. I had them move sufficiently far back that I could throw it appropriately out of focus with the right aperture.
6. To get the framing right, I had Adam hold the example photo while I directed Mom in how to move her head and/or turn her body.
   
7. We got the framing just about right with this one, but the posed face wasn't going to do the trick.
   
8. Finally it was time to get "the look". I knew what I had to do. I had to swear at my mom."Come on, Mom. Get it f***ing right." CLICK!
9. I fired off a couple more frames as I apologized and told her it was only for the shoot. Luckily she believed me and started to laugh! (I'm putting the photo here to prove that.)
   
10. Then I reviewed my shots and saw that YES, I had what I needed! Showed it to the family, and it was confirmed. Unfortunately, in the excitement of dropping the camera to swear at my Mom (for which I'm really sorry, Mom...), I changed the framing. Mental note for next time to be cognizant of that.
11. Finally, got it home and processed the RAW image to bring out the details--just some curves, and a bit of localized exposure/contrast change to make her irises more similar to the ones in the original photo. And, voila!