Photograph

“ The photograph, supposing it to be perfect in its way, gives what is seen at a first glance, only with the optical part of the process expanded over the whole field, instead of being confined to one point, as the eye is. ”

“ This, in a photograph, is, in a great measure, a question of lights and shadows, and of their distribution. For every face there is a light and a shadow to be specially selected as the one that will show it to the best advantage. ”

“ If it be a commonplace photograph taken with a wide-angle lens, say, of a stretch of scenery of equal value, as are most photographic landscapes, of course the eye will have nothing to settle thoughtfully upon, and will wander about, and finally go away dissatisfied. ”

“ Any one who has ever looked at an object through a camera will realize the force of this assertion, for a photograph is a perfect reproduction of the view as it is reflected in the camera. There cannot be any misrepresentation. ”

“ Photography has undoubtedly played an important part in the development of modern art, both in figure and landscape. In landscapes we are inclined to think that the influence of photography was for a time hurtful, for this reason, painters were apt to emulate the detail of the photograph, and lose the breadth of man’s view of Nature in consequence. ”

“ A photograph is a modern invention whereby, by means of an artificial camera obscura, the sun, the author of all light, is cunningly induced to bind upon paper forever5 the impression made by the actual waves of light set in motion by certain objects. ”

“ It is quite true that occasionally an exquisite photograph on an enlarged scale may be obtained, which exhibits features such as no pencil could portray as accurately, but rarely indeed will the photograph furnish all the details that a practised eye and hand, kept patiently at the sketch-board, will detect and faithfully describe. ”

“ Notwithstanding the fact that the process of making a photographic picture is detailed in a great many books,—nay, although we have given a brief account of the principal stages of it in one of our former articles, we are going to take the reader into the sanctuary of the art with us, and ask him to assist, in the French sense of the word, while we make a photograph,—say, rather, while the mysterious forces which we place in condition to act work that miracle for us. ”

“ The sun and the camera between them certainly do your picture for you, and as you urge, there is more of artifice in the merest Sunday-school tale than in the best of photographs. Still, you must remember that photography too has its artifice, its choice of the right and the wrong way, and its exercise of judgment; there is a great deal in it that is not mechanical; and in its essence it is of the same class as the books I have been alluding to. ”

“ Only leave your work fairly open and you may draw on as large a scale and with as coarse lines as you please, and the camera will photograph it down for you to the exact space the illustration has to fill and will win you undeserved credit for delicacy and fineness of touch as well. ”

“ The photographer finds himself in a veritable paradise, able to set up his camera at any desirable distance, even to 'pose' his subjects to suit his fancy, and take pictures of birds, nests and young to his heart's content. ”

“ I have some little skill in photography, and I had brought with me a camera and some dry plates, intending to photograph any striking scenes that I might come across during my journey. By the aid of dry plates, photography, and especially travelling photography, is much simplified. ”

“ IN the previous chapters we have become acquainted with the development and the theory and practice of photography, and have mentioned cursorily various of its applications. It is our present purpose to give special attention to one point which is of great import in judging of the value of a photograph. ”

“ On the other hand, it is a matter of common knowledge, that two photographs of the same person, taken under different conditions of lighting or with different lenses may readily be thought to be the portraits of two distinct individuals, or that a photograph of one person may unduly emphasise a momentary expression differing from the normal one, with the result that the portrait may be mistaken for a likeness of someone else. ”

“ Here, in this book, for example, are one hundred photographs of one hundred of the most famous sights, scenes and monuments in the whole world. To see these sights, these scenes, these monuments, is to attain a liberal education. Now what is seeing? Seeing, the philosopher will tell you, is to have certain waves of light strike your eye and create an impression on your retina of the objects that are in front of you. The retina, in other words, is nothing but a natural camera obscura. And what is a photograph? ”

“ A Portrait, so called from the Latin protrahere, to draw forth, is produced by the individual skill of an artist; whereas a Photograph, conformably to the two Greek words photos, light, and graphein, to write, is obtained by the action of sunlight upon a chemically prepared surface, such as silver, zinc, copper, glass, or paper. ”

“ We have already mentioned photo-montage, but a more common instance would be arrangement or posing of a group ... Thirdly, a person may create a worthwhile photograph by being at the right place at the right time. ”

“ The problem of producing a photograph in colours, permanently showing nature’s tints in all their gradations, has still a great fascination for some experimenters, and startling announcements are made from time to time of some discovery in this direction. ”

“ We know from the camera how a lightning-flash really looks, what a horse is like when at full speed, the different actions of a bird’s wing when flying, the true shape of each wave in a storm, also the swing of drapery in a high wind, and how men and women really appear when excited; for before the days of instantaneous photography the painter was apt to be deceived, and take as one several motions and effects. ”

“ But not only in portraiture is photography a great art, for it catches the stately pose of the mountain, the grandeur of the sea, the beauty of the forest, or the majesty of Niagara Falls, and brings them all home to us, even to the vision of the bed-ridden invalid. The camera alike records the secrets of the starry heavens and the bacteria of the microscopic world. ”

“ But the whole is compacted, refined and poured forth in one flood of liquid harmony. It is light, airy and soft of movement, yet sharp and precise in its details; every face is a portrait, and the whole a group in clear photography. ”

“ In photography one man delights in the etching point and cannot stop until he has made a net work all over his plate and led us to look at this instead of his picture, which, if good, would have been let alone—a clever device of throwing dust into our eyes. ”

“ Hitherto the chief aim of the photographer seems to have been a biting sharpness of detail in the negative, which is generally quite fatal to the result from an artistic point of view, for in breadth lies the beauty and sentiment of landscape. To produce a picture the photographer must select his lens and adjust his focus, so as to get an expression as nearly identical with the visual one as possible, and he must print in such good tone as will give the closest approximation to the values in nature. ”

“ Photography is shown to be the one radical advance in depiction since art began. In days of old an object had to be seen before it could be pictured; to-day new heavens and a new earth impress their images first in the camera, to declare themselves only afterward to the eye. ”

“ Light to be manipulated at will, lenses to grasp objects in and out of the present focus with equal intensity and proportion: as a painter places objects upon his canvas at what distance and under what shadow he pleases, so I think the photographer will yet do, and that before long, as he will, I am sure, yet be able to reproduce by the camera and his chemicals all the colours in the object set up before him, as he sees it reflected upon his ground-glass focussing plate. ”

“ It is a custom of continental painters to compose extensive groups and photograph them for study in arrangement. The author has seen numerous compositions in photography in which artists have posed as characters of well-known paintings. ”

“ The home and the school may now be decorated with the same art treasures that millionaires enjoy, and all through the magic of process reproduction. The photographer has carried his camera into every corner of the earth and has photographed all the wonders of nature and architecture. ”

“ If an artist paint the interior of a wax-work museum, or if an actor give a burlesque portrait of a man-statue on the stage, we again have spiritual labour and artistic intuition. Finally, if photography have anything in it of artistic, it will be to the extent that it transmits the intuition of the photographer, his point of view, the pose and the grouping which he has striven to attain. ”

“ Let us suppose that a man blindfolded, and this artificial eye, a photographic camera, are set down in the open air in the bright sunshine before the scene of some great ceremony—a procession of a thousand persons, the moving panorama of a city street, or a wide extent of landscape. ”

“ A photographic artist strives for the same end and in two points only does he fall short of the painter—in color and in the ability to render so accurately the relative values, although this is to a great extent compensated by the tone of the picture. How then is photography superior to etching, wood-cutting, charcoal drawing? The [pg 178] drawing of the lens is not to be equalled by any man. There is ample room for selection, judgment and posing, and, in a word, in capable hands a finished photograph is a work of art. ”

“ For many years photography was largely confined to portraiture and the faithful reproduction of objects and scenes. All that was expected of a camera was to “make a picture” of a thing. Within the last forty years, however, as reproductive processes have been invented, photography has come to be one of the most useful of arts. ”

“ Art, in the present age, stands conspicuous for its great achievements in Truthfulness, which has been guided and assisted by the aid of the Camera. Perspective, the great key to Art, was fabulous before Photography was introduced; and by its aid what perfection has it not obtained, not only is distance42 mathematically exact, but the round, soft, accuracy of light and shade in nature, is most beautifully defined! ”

“ The literalness of photography, which prevents its ever competing with etching or painting in imaginative art, makes it of inestimable value in certain realms, and scientists of all sorts, astronomers, physicists, physicians, pathologists, as well as architects, building contractors, business men, who wish a precise and accurate record of any object, recognize the value of the camera. ”

“ Again, certain critics never seem tired of pelting the novelist with comparisons drawn between painting and photography. "Mr. So-and-So's fidelity to life suggests the camera rather than the brush and palette" ”

“ Exhibitions in many museums which have hitherto been indifferent to pictures made with the lens have opened the eyes of the public to the possibilities of the camera. Clubs of photographic workers in various cities have maintained or fostered the movement. The lure of the moving picture has stimulated the interest of countless multitudes in photography, and the occasional presentation of fine pictorial work in this direction has given a prophecy of better things to come. ”

“ Most persons have a fancy that the application of photography is always uniform, whatever may be the object to be taken, and, therefore, that a photographer who can take a portrait must be able to take equally well a machine, a landscape, or an oil-painting. ”

“ Any one who has ever dabbled in photography to the extent of shutting himself up in a tight little closet, its pitch darkness tempered slightly by a dim red glow, and dipped dark, smoky-looking pieces of glass and paper into various solutions, knows with what eagerness he waits for the blank black squares and strips to come to life, break out into spots of light, which gradually assume familiar shapes and contours. ”

“ For one reason or another the men whose names were known ten or fifteen years ago seem to have dropped out and their places are being filled by new blood, men with high ideals and aspirations, who are not content merely with reproducing, by means of their cameras, pretty scenes and places, but who believe that photography is capable of much more—of showing not only the physical facts, but the very spirit of nature herself—a true impressionism ”

“ One of the most recent and beautiful is the art of photography, where, by means of applied chemistry, aided by the rays of the sun, there can be produced the most pleasing and lifelike representations. ”

“ The opinion that Photography exaggerates to such an excess that, the lineaments it has pourtrayed are quite distorted, or that five or ten years have suddenly been added to a “sitter’s” age, and their youth apparently eclipsed by the lines being, perhaps, too harshly defined, and the shadows too strongly marked, adding innumerable furrows, reverential and admired in old age,44 but despised in youth! ”

“ Superb color portraits of many familiar flowers in their living tints, and no less beautiful pictures in black and white of others—each blossom photographed directly from nature—form an unrivaled series. ”

“ As the problems to the maker of pictures by photography are the same as those of the painter and the especial ambition of the former's art is to be painter-like, separations have been thought unnecessary in the address of the text. It is the best wish of the author that photography, following painting in her essential principles as she does, may prove herself a well met companion along art's highway,—seekers together, at arm's length, and in defined limits, of the same goal. ”