Ulf 1993

He was basically one of the very first people i had in my home studio, when i was transitioning from slide film (and Cibachrome de Luxe prints), into color negative film - as it had much more gentle contrast for everything revolving skin colors, portraits, etc.

I never scanned these negatives. Partially because I remember that i "wasted" like 12 film rolls in this session - and realize relatively quickly afterwards, that my choice of film as well lighting wasn't really anything to write home about. The choice in this example, was a contrasty Fujicolor G-100 film. Kind of the last choice you would use for portraits *LOL*

Nevertheless - it was fun to experiment. I really wanted to get better in terms of portraits. Now i had to think of colors on top, as well. This photo background was my very first; two broad stripes glued together from brown packaging paper. Not ideal, but i was unemployed - and really wanted something to "erase" the background in my room, replacing it with something smooth.

One uses what one has. And what was affordable to acquire. Those were my days back in 1993.

 

Tons of dust particles

This color negative had THOUSANDS of dust particles. It took me something like 40 minutes to extinguish each and every one...

 

Ulf

I met him at the Freskati here in Stockholm - and asked him if he could think of a photo session together. He agreed.

Ulf had this young Baseball type of look. (untrained, natural) Or is it the Blue Collar type ? I don't know which expression is the correct one. And today these various types have gotten so... driven and "developed" (or even over-developed/over-used) that they've become a cliché.

I thought more of the original, earlier and more natural type of look.

To me, he didn't look typically Swedish. Or perhaps because when a couple million of Swedes left for the USA 120+ years ago, they introduced certain type of looks in men over there, too ?

 

No Particular Goal

The photo session in itself had no goals. I just wanted to image him in various, normal settings - and train myself in studio portraits with other people.

That was all.

 

Steel blue eyes

Really startling blue ! They didn't turn out as blue in this photo (and film type), but there are other film rolls in which his eye color came out very strong. Here are his eyes visible from a different roll of film i had scanned many years ago back in 2008 (as well the photo below)

 


Page 16 • Year 2025