Girlfriend's sister

by Bruce B
(New Orleans)

Taken at an old abandoned shack on River Road outside of Baton Rouge in the mid 1970s. All natural light, late in the afternoon. Hasselblad camera with 80mm lens. Probably TriX.

The subject was the younger sister of a girl I dated. This is a scan of the original print made many years ago.

Hope you like it.

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Personally, I like it a lot. And I can't stop myself wondering when it was taken.

I'm looking at the clothes and hairstyle and am thinking late 70s? Am I close?

Barring my curiosity with the time scale, I like the pose here, with the model looking slightly up and sideways at the camera - always a good starting point for portrait photography.

The classic mistake often made with portrait photography is to take the photo at a lower vantage point than the model. All this tends to do is make noses look bigger and add double chins!

I love the sepia colour too. It gives a nice warmth to the photo that is sometimes missing in a pure black and white picture.

What with the wood behind (warmer material than metal or glass) it tends to give the whole photo a nice warm glow.

The final element that makes that warmth so hug-able is the time of day - late afternoon. It's what photographers call the golden hour. The light is so much softer then than in the middle of the day.

On a final note - taken with a Hasselblad. Lovely cameras! Too darn expensive for most folks, but great quality. There are still professionals today using old Hasselblads which just goes to show how good they are.

Thanks for the submission Bruce,

Darrell.

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