Photographer

“ If you will previously approach the polite photographer in your most charmingly courteous and irresistible style, enable him to perceive the glittering phantom cone reversed in mid-air, invite him to grasp it and give to this "airy nothing a local habitation and a name," and convince him that, if not illusive, it is even more elusive than the merry sunbeam which his camera alone can catch in all its beauty, he will at once be lost in admiration of your magic skill and singular sagacity, and instantly find it impossible to avoid preparing the wonder-working photograph on glass. ”

“ The hideousness of the photographer’s name in shining golden letters is far too common. Nothing could look better for these small pictures than plain black mounts, with no word or letter or coloured line or any other embellishment. If the photographer is such a tradesman at heart that he must air his medals, let him put all that part of him on the back of the card. ”

“ In the former case, however, the photographer cannot be regarded as more than an exceptionally sensitive and perceptive craftsman, and in the latter instance the camera user, of course, ceases to be a photographer and becomes a creative artist, using photography merely as a basis on which to construct an imaginative result. ”

“ Invention and design, feeling and imagination, are all a part of the photographer's suite. He employs them all. And these too are qualities the most artistic. Technique, which is manual and not spiritual, is the one point at which art and photography cannot coalesce. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Popular Pastimes are numerous, but to many there is nothing more fascinating than photography. The magic of sunshine, the wonders of nature, and the beauties of art are tools in the hands of the amateur photographer. If you want to get a start in this up-to-date hobby, this outfit will help you. You will enjoy the work and be delighted with the beautiful pictures you can make. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These three factors are entirely under the photographer's control, and in so far as he avails himself of them, not merely to reproduce a view but to reproduce the picturesque effect in a view, he becomes and deserves to be regarded as an artist. ”

“ Have our modern artists made anything like adequate use of this excellent invention? My own answer would be that they have used it, skilfully enough, to save themselves trouble, but that its artistic possibilities have been allowed to remain almost unexplored. As for the trouble-saving—and trouble-saving is not only legitimate but commendable—the photographer's camera is the most obliging of craftsmen. ”

“ Now I will answer this question before going any further, because it has a bearing on the subject before us—the making of a handy and cheap camera obscura, which cannot fail to be a source of amusement and pleasure, especially when the sun shines.
The reason why the object on the photographer’s ground-glass plate is seen upside down is easily explained. Light, as I need hardly remind older boys, proceeds in straight lines from any illuminated object. It is thus thrown upon the photographer’s plate. A glance at the accompanying diagram (Fig. 1) will suffice to show what I mean. ”

“ If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; ”

“ We had a small steamer, a choppy sea, and there was a young man with a Kodak on board. I abominate amateur photographers. They are offensive. It is the fact that they insist on photography being an art that makes them so objectionable. Photography is not an art. One merely requires a good apparatus and a knowledge of how to work it, and there you are—a good photographer. ”

“ When a photographer trains his camera upon an object, however intense the light may be and however clean-cut the picture that is thrown upon the plate in the camera, unless that plate is properly sensitized so that the picture may be impressed upon it, all of the other conditions are in vain. The reader is always a part of the book he is reading. ”

“ But the photographic artist, perhaps, has had six or seven young ladies, similarly dressed, one after another, during that forenoon, each sitter with her own ideas how she ought to be taken—ideas gleaned from someone else’s pose, or something she has seen in a shop window or an album—ideas which the original instincts of the artist rebel against. The same may be said of the portrait painter, only that he has days, sometimes weeks, to study his subject, whereas the photographer is only allowed moments to collect his well-nigh scattered faculties. ”

“ And we may state with equal confidence, that the photographer who has the sagacity to perceive the defects of his instruments, the honesty to avow it, and the skill to remedy them by the applications of modern science, will take a place as high in photographic portraiture as a Reynolds or a Lawrence in the sister art. ”

“ Picture-posing opens a very interesting class of subjects for the amateur photographer. When his ingenuity is taxed for new ideas, he can find pleasure and profit in reproducing the compositions of the masters. If he has groups of figures to arrange, he may interest his sitters in posing à la some famous portrait group of an old master. ”

“ Some time before the Presidential election, a photographer residing in one of our cities (an ingenious man and a scientific chemist,) was engaged in making experiments with his camera, hoping to discover some new combination whereby to increase the facility of “picturing the human form divine,” etc. One morning, his apparatus being in excellent order, he determined to photograph himself. ”

“ When the photographer wishes to develop the picture that is hidden in the film of the sensitive plate he carries it to a darkened room, and bathed in the developing solution the latent image gradually appears, even to the minutest details. ”

“ He deliberately renounced any competition with the camera of the photographer, and claimed the right to arrange the different parts of what he drew in the manner best calculated to convey a certain impression, while preserving the utmost exactness in the representation of detail in each part. ”

“ The use of the camera opens a valuable opportunity for training boys and girls in matters of art. The young photographer wants to learn to make pictures, and his experiments duplicate in a far-off way the experience of the great artists. His first care is to get the image in the right place on the plate. If he is taking a house, he must have enough sky above it, enough grass in the foreground, and enough space on each side to look well. ”

“ There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. ”

“ Unless the organization has within its ranks a photographer of more than ordinary ability, who is willing to spend some time and money in preliminary study of the motion-picture camera, and in wasting film [Pg 109] in experimentation, it is necessary that a professional camera-man be engaged. ”

“ A mass of foliage with little penetration by the sky except in one or two places and at the side, not the centre, may always be found safe. If the attraction is too great the group suffers. Appreciating the importance of his setting for groups the photographer must select these with three points in view; simplicity, uninterest and exit in background; simplicity, uninterest and leading line or balancing mass or spot (if required) in foreground. When looking for backgrounds he may feel quite sure he has one if it is the sort of thing he would never dream of photographing on its own account. ”

“ The real triumph is that of the photographer who utilises the material ready at hand in his own district, be it large or small."
And more, a person does not have to be an expert photographer in order to succeed at the work. ”

“ A small portfolio of his charcoal reproductions or a few photographs of his pictures should be a part of the print collection of every artist. No better designer of small groups ever lived.
With the amount of good art now coming from the camera it is strange that no groups of note have been produced.12 In the field of pure portraiture the attempt may as well be abandoned. The photographer can at best but mitigate conditions. The picture group can only apply when sacrifice and subordination are possible. ”

“ A spirit photographer with an extensive clientèle will find it well worth his while to take the necessary steps to secure photographs appropriate to at any rate his more regular sitters, from whom, in the course of a few séances, it will not be difficult to glean enough information to put him on the right track. ”

“ While all these wonders have come to pass in practical service, photography has likewise grown and expanded in the field of fine art. There are photographic art schools, and clubs and exhibitions—all for the purpose of cultivating and developing the camera to the finest forms of expression. We have highly cultivated and skilled photographers who are true artists, and who are engaged in employing photography as a means to fine art achievement. ”

“ The American—his name is Willard—is going to charter a photographer to come round with us and take records of all the objects of interest, and we shall be able to get copies of any photographs that we want. ”

“ One often suspects photographers of taking up the same point of view as the less speedy draughtsmen of nearly a hundred years ago, not because one vantage-ground inevitably suggests itself, but because artists of the camera are inclined to follow the lead of their predecessors. ”

“ Amateur photographers, male and female, may be found during the season at the summer resorts by the sea or at the breezy mountain house; wherever the well-to-do citizen takes his family for rest and recreation during the "dog days," there will the tripod be set up and the Camera will record the topography of the vicinity.
For every one of these thousands of amateurs there p142 is something to learn before he or she can succeed in producing a picture; to know how to make a photograph never comes by intuition, but must be acquired by study and practical experiment. ”

“ Accommodation.—The focussing or sharpening of the image is performed by a special apparatus. In every camera, the farther the object is from the eye the farther forward, and the nearer the object is to the eye the farther backward, is its image thrown. In photographers' cameras the back is made to slide, and can be drawn away from the lens when the object that casts the picture is near, and pushed forward when it is far. ”

“ She sat with great intensity, giving the whole of her mind to it, and was capable of remaining for an hour almost as motionless as if she were before a photographer’s lens. I could see she had been photographed often, but somehow the very habit that made her good for that purpose unfitted her for mine. At first I was extremely pleased with her lady-like air, and it was a satisfaction, on coming to follow her lines, to see how good they were and how far they could lead the pencil. But after a few times I began to find her too insurmountably stiff; ”

“ Examine the lens every morning to see if the glasses are at all dimmed by damp or dust, and if so, use the chamois. You must not expect good work from lenses whose surfaces are in any way dimmed.
Study your lens with care, and learn all its good and weak points, and so enable yourself to take every advantage of instrument, light and pose in making a sitting.
CAMERA BOXES.
The camera box and lens in the hands of the competent photographer are what the brush and colors may be in the hands of the portrait painter. ”

“ It never occurred to him that he was a passive thing, acted upon by an influence above and beyond Gloria, that he was merely the sensitive plate on which the photograph was made. Some gargantuan photographer had focussed the camera on Gloria and snap!—the poor plate could but develop, confined like all things to its nature. ”

“ President of the Pictorial Photographers of America To many people photography is merely a mechanical process. To an increasing number, however, photography is being seen as an art, by which personal impressions of nature or human life may be expressed as truly as by the brush. These workers in photography see in it a medium by which the action of light upon sensitive surfaces may be so controlled as really to interpret scenes and persons in the individualistic spirit of a true art. From every part of our country come evidences of the growing appreciation of photography as a pictorial medium. ”

“ There is no need to slay the slain, and give any further answer to the objection that photography is a mechanical process, if there were, it would be enough to remind the objectors that if twenty photographers were sent to a district of limited area, and told to take a given composition, the result would be twenty different renderings. ”