Books - That's an interesting carte-de-visite. I like the cartridge belt especially, appears to be just a plain narrow belt with loops sewn on it - perhaps a home-made job or locally manufactured like some early thimble belts (i.e. the infamous 'fair weather Christian' belts) I've read so much about. This photo might even be 1870s but without a date written on it it’s hard to tell for sure. Also is hard to pick out any dead give-aways on the clothing and footwear to pin down an exact decade.
For what it’s worth it looks pretty clear that your carte-de-visite photograph is a paper print made from a glass negative and then glued to card stock. It appears like at the top of the photo there is a thin line – if so, and if it is gold tone in color, that is a sign for an early carte-de-visit and the line wasn’t just for decoration but locating the photograph on the cardstock while gluing it as well. One-piece cardboard cart-de-visites didn’t come along until later in the 19th century though of course my references aren’t handy so take it with a grain of salt as I cannot quote chapter & verse. All of this leads me to believe that your photograph could be earlier than the latter 19th century/early 20th century based on the carte-de-visite’s construction. However, I’m sure the earlier manufacturing process ran parallel to more innovative versions that followed. So as is common, it’s hard to prove conclusively when it was made.
SS - I think Books is just basking in the victory of having uploaded a photo to the forum. Had somebody not walked me through it a couple of times, the non-tech savvy cave man that I am, I doubt I could have figured it out at all. So good show to Book's success!
Brass