Girl With Cat

This is another one of those vintage prints of mine from the 1960's. I have a framed print of it on the wall over my computer desk. It was taken in my back yard about 1968, shortly after I'd bought the 19mm Canon lens. It was a new way of seeing. It was both exciting and stimulating to get this new outlook on the world. For the first year I used that lens for personal work almost to the exclusion of all other lenses. I also found excuses to use it on news asignments and portrait sessions.

I'd been shooting some head shots of this girl when the cat wandered into the yard and let us know that she wanted to be picked up. The soft but directional light under the tree gave good modeling without being overly harsh. I was hoping to get both the girl and the cat to look in the same direction over my left shoulder but the cat kept looking straight at me. I fired off a few frames anyway, then the cat got bored and wanted to be put down again. When I looked at the contact sheet the next day this image just jumped up and said "print me!". I've always loved it. As for the girl, I don't remember her name and I have no idea what became of her. She'd be about 60 now.