Sylvia, Thelma, Patricia and my sister Kelley were the “Four Musketeers” throughout their junior high and high school years. All four girls were almost always willing guinea pigs as I was learning photography. Any time I had an idea, they were game to model for me. This is one of the first shots I remember taking of Sylvia. We shot it out in the country, not far from where she lived. She’s wearing the dress my dad helped me picked out for my graduation from high school. I’ve always loved this photo—she has such a classically beautiful profile. And she still looks the same, decades later. This is another one of my vaseline-on-the-uv-filter vignette images. It kind of has that Holga look, too, with the out-of-focus dark areas around the edges. I most likely shot this with my Sears Pentax K1000. 35mm slide scanned by ScanCafe.com (FYI: I received my DVD with high rez scans from ScanCafe a week ago, followed with the arrival of my original slides today—all safe and sound. I highly recommend this company if you have a slew of slides to contend with.)
© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.
This is a beautiful young woman in a beautiful photograph…outstanding shot.
First I’ll just repeat burstmode!
I see the profile as the main motive and would crop away the lower part, leaving the nail on the index finger.
Thanks, Carsten. I appreciate the comment and feedback! Happy New Year!
Sylvia was a beautiful girl and is now a beautiful woman. A significant part of her growing-up took place in our home, along with her sister and others, all best friends of one or more of my three beautiful daughters. Oh, and it’s a great photograph—it portrays Sylvia in a pensive mood, so characteristic of her many moods, and because I am familiar with her family and her life at that time, I feel qualified to speculate on her thoughts and emotions (of course, her dominant thoughts may simply be her wanting you to hurry up and complete the shoot).
With all due respect, may I please respond to the comment in which a viewer suggested cropping the image? As it is, it shows a young girl with left knee drawn up, with her right hand clasping the leg and just a hint of her thumb. I used my checkbook to crop the photo just below the nail on the index finger as suggested, and the image morphed into a young girl holding an infant close to her chest, with the infant’s left ear barely visible.
Try it—I would be interested to see if you, and perhaps one or more of your other viewers, see the same change that I see.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
As much as I dislike complaining, I’m now complaining—I don’t recall any response to my discovery in this photo of an infant being held close to its mother’s breast.
Do you see it?
Does anyone see it?
Huh, huh?
Hmmmm….didn’t I reply to that? Or was it on the phone? Deja-vu—I think we’re having this conversation all over again!