Sepia Saturday No. 144

It's once again Sepia Saturday, when I take a break from the business of crime fiction writing to indulge in my favourite hobby, collecting and admiring old photographs. This week's theme, as provided by Alan Burnett at http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.ca/, is based on a photo posted by Alan in which the photographer omitted some poor fellow's head. As a variation on the theme of photographer as decapitator, or omitter of other body parts, I found two photos in my collection that suggest the theme of amateur photographers as imperfect framers and shot composers.

This first photo is a family portrait:

I like this photo very much. An outdoor portrait of a very handsome man with, I'm guessing, his mother and his daughter. Everyone's very well dressed, but the photographer "spoiled" the shot by failing to clear away the timothy and clover in the foreground, not to mention the gigantic leaf on the right. Just the same, the photo was considered acceptable enough to have been mounted on an expensive-looking embossed black mounting board (cropped out of my scan) and kept with other family photos through the years. In pencil, on the back, the photo is dated "1912." I like this portrait not only because the man has a great mustache, but also because, unlike a studio shot, it puts these people right in the middle of the physical world in which they lived. In the middle of life.

This second photo is a group photo of an event of some kind:

I've included this picture in the theme of amateur frame-botching because of the sign or banner in the top left corner. Just enough to tantalize, far too little to let us know what kind of an event it was. Pencilled on the bottom of the mounting board (which I cropped out of this scan) is "Burt Grove." It could be anywhere, but I think it might be Burt's Grove, which was in Auburn, New York, a Google search of which turns up several references to picnics and other similar events there in the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century.

Now that we've dispensed with the theme, take a look at the people in this photo (click on it for a closer view). First we have the group of five girls under the tree on the right, who seem to be the only ones aware of the photographer. Next, look at the young lady in the centre, viewed in profile. She seems to be trying to talk to the young fellow sitting under the tree, who appears to be sulking. Oblivious, everyone else is helping themselves to the spread on the tables, which is supposed to be the main idea, in the first place! This one, folks, is an example of a picture that could easily support a thousand words and a hundred different stories.