Portrait of a young woman.

 

Anonymous.

When we moved to our current home the first thing I did with the property was to add a studio building. It's not large and it's not fancy but it has been convenient and a good resource for making portraits that I like. When we finished construction it was 1997 and I was still photographing almost completely on film. I had several digital cameras but they were slow and the files were never a match for the image qualities I could get from a medium format frame of film. Especially with black and white.

At one point I'd shot with three medium format camera systems. The Rollei SL6008s, the Mamiya6 and, of course, a variety of Hasselblads. But in the end I always came back to the Hasselblads, especially for the kinds of portraits I liked to do in the studio. 

I met the subject of this image at Sweetish Hill Bakery and asked her if she would come to my studio and pose for a black and white portrait. She agreed. We spent half an hour making the photographs and a bit longer in conversation. I was never looking for a smile or a typical, "sexy" pose. I wanted something more authentic to the person. I think I got most of what I was looking for in the portrait. 

And then she was gone. 

I think the portrait is balanced and "clean" looking. Nothing extraneous. 

Again, this is a copy shot of a print. The digital copy was made with an iPhone.  Even so, the image holds up well for web use...