Well G. Singhi worked in Binghamton, New York from 1872 to 1886. This clever photograph seems to have caught an incoming snowball in mid-flight, with the newsboy about to deflect it with his elbow prior to launching a volley of his own. This image was apparently distributed to photographers in the form of mounted prints bound into copies of the St. Louis Practical Photographer for December 1878. Perhaps to allow time to make the prints (each of which required exposure to sunlight), this wintery photograph was made in the sweltering month of July. This feat was not lost on the local newspaper, the Binghamton Daily Republican, which reported that one of its own employees served as Singhi’s model:
His subject is…one of our best carrier boys (he is also a student at Singhis), on his route, with the Republican heading in plain sight above the top of his satchel. The boy has stopped for a moment to throw snowballs from a post probably for the sake of acquiring more proficiency in throwing crumpled papers against front doors. …Of course this is a Winter scene, but it was taken in scalding July, with the mercury at the top of the nineties. He has pictured a snow storm to perfection. Singhis art in out-of-door views has given him already a national reputation.
–Binghamton Daily Republican, September 14, 1878
