Photographic print

“ To have the negative reversed, the print should first be placed, face out, against the glass of the printing frame, with its back against the sensitive surface of the transparency plate, the back closed in and exposed to a large lamp for about five seconds. Every care must be taken that you use the best of negatives, carefully retouched if necessary, as the professional photographic etchers have informed me that (from their standpoint) the success of the whole process depends on the quality of the original negative and the care taken in artistic retouching. ”

“ Almost as undesirable will be the very highly enamelled surfaces of some photographic papers, the surface gloss producing reflections which interfere with the copying. The best for general use will be the smoothest platinotype paper, or a not too highly-glazed white albumenised paper, either of which are obtainable at most chemists and all photographic dealers. The print should be of a medium depth, not so dark as to give heavy solid shadows, nor so light as to omit all detail from the lightest portions. ”

“ The commonest form of print is on paper, although the most satisfactory print from the photographic standpoint is the transparency on glass or celluloid film.
Transparencies.—Transparencies are made by the regular photographic processes of exposure and development, on glass plates or films placed in contact with the negative, or in the appropriate position in an enlarging camera. The sensitometry and the terms used to describe the qualities of plate or film for this purpose are those already given in connection with the general discussion of plates and films. ”

“ In making papers for photographic mounts a very necessary quality is that the paper shall be absolutely free from chemical substances likely to affect the photographic prints mounted upon them. Colour prints are mounted on neutral cover papers for insertion in magazines or books, but when publications have extensive and growing circulations, the time and cost of mounting militate against this very effective method of displaying illustrations. ”

“ Photographic printing papers are of two classes—those which are used in direct sunlight and upon which the image gradually appears, and those which are similar to plates and which are given a very short time exposure in artificial light and the picture developed just as we should a plate. The beginner will probably have more uniform success with sunlight paper after the simple process of toning and fixing is learned, although the developing papers are extremely simple to handle and give better results. ”

“ For special objects, also, photographs can be sent by telegraph through the use of the photo-relief in plaster of Paris, or other suitable material, which travels backwards and forwards underneath a pointer, the rising and falling of which is accurately represented by thick and thin lines—or by the darker and lighter photographic printing of a beam of light of varying intensity—at the other end, so that a shaded reproduction of the photograph is produced. ”

“ It is said to enable the artist to make his own designs and drawings, to print from them on photographic paper, and reproduce the same upon lithographic stone, so as to obtain impressions of his own work in the minutest detail, without the aid of the engraver, or lithographic draughtsman. ”

“ Where the copy furnished is a photograph, or wash drawing, it is first photographed one half larger, or, where fine work is desired, twice the size the plate required. In cases where exceptionally fine work is required it is even made three times the size. The photograph thus obtained is technically termed a silver print, and is an untoned print on plain paper. On this silver print the artist makes his drawing, using the best India ink, which must be so black that the finest hair-line, when examined through a magnifying glass, appears absolutely jet black. ”

“ Few photographs are suitable for photo-mechanical reproduction without some previous preparation. Accentuation or modulation of the high lights and shadows will in all probability be necessary to secure a sufficient contrast of light and shade. The middle tints may require but little attention, unless it be to work down any tendency to abruptness in the gradations of tone. A bold and well-defined silver print usually copies well when clamped between two pieces of glass to take out the grain, and photographed by artificial light. ”

“ Photographic fat or resin prints should be treated like ordinary prints. Moisten them on the back with water—which is preferable to placing them between moistened blotting-paper, since the drawing does not grow too wet—and wait till they are easily flexible. Drops of water on the film can and often do destroy the proof. ”

“ The problem must be left to each individual. The beauty of a bromoil print, for instance, is supreme to its devotee: is its superiority to other processes worth the time and the toil necessary to make it, which might be devoted to the study of composition, of a wider range of subject, or to the mastery of simpler processes? Picture construction and print quality are after all the main things in photography, not the medium we use.
There is no royal road to distinction in photography, but each year sees some helps devised for the earnest worker, whether amateur or professional. ”

“ At this juncture, photography, particularly in its form of photo-zincography, steps in, and offers the means of doing for the amateur of ancient and curious literature, for maps and MSS., precisely what the printing-press does for the great body of readers. All we need is that the obstacles which still render this process expensive, except when applied to objects in great demand, should be removed, that the scholar should be enabled to procure a cheap photographic reproduction as easily as the general reader can obtain a cheap book. ”

“ Photographs are valuable in themselves, and the negatives serve for subsequent enlargements. They are unquestionably accurate, and the labour of making them being mechanical, may be delegated. If the print be in printer’s ink on white paper, the process is straightforward, first of obtaining a negative and afterwards photo-prints from it. The importance of the paper or card used to receive the finger print being quite white, has already been pointed out. An imprint on white crockery-ware is beautifully clear. Some of the photographs may be advantageously printed by the ferro-prussiate process. ”

“ Nevertheless, we feel that the day is not far distant when every artist who expresses himself by photography will also bite his own plates and make his own blocks, and the prints will be published by print-dealers as etchings are now. This, in our opinion, is the only method which can give full artistic satisfaction. A final important consideration is the number of good prints which can be pulled from each plate. Dawson’s plates, being bitten deeper, will obviously stand more wear and tear than the others, and will produce a greater number of good impressions. ”

“ But how much more popular and useful does photography become, when it can be used as a means of securing plates from which to print photographs in a regular printing press, and, what is more astonishing and delightful, to produce the real colors of nature as shown in the subject, no matter how brilliant or varied. ”

“ Transfer printing for ceramic decoration presents many features in common with transfer printing for metal decoration. Printing colour transparencies is a commercial phase of colour work which is productive of many curious and attractive effects. Unlike the ordinary colour prints, the transparency is intended for exhibition both by reflected and transmitted [56] light. The paper is of a thin, tough quality, and the first printing is usually a white of good covering power and exceptional opacity. It is not necessary to print a solid white groundwork for the coloured design. ”

“ To reproduce an old chalk drawing so that it might be successfully transferred to stone and printed in the usual way, would be practically impossible by any other process. In copying through a ruled screen many of the delicate contrasts of light and shade would be so reduced as to become almost valueless, consequently the print loses both in artistic and expressive power. In contradistinction to this a natural grain exhibits no harshness or indistinctness in the gradations of tone, and retains its clearness and sharpness throughout the printing operation. ”

“ In trimming landscape prints, it is impossible to give any set rules; the judgment as to what is artistic must be the guide. Of one thing we may be certain, that, unless the operator who took the original negative knows exactly how to balance his picture on the focussing-screen, the print will always bear cutting down in one direction or the other. Such a clipping, of course, alters the size of the print, which, if it be one of a series, will be a misfortune; but, on the other hand, the artistic value of the individual print will be increased. ”

“ The half-tone process is used almost exclusively for reproducing photographs and wash drawings, though it will produce a facsimile of any kind of copy, such as impressions from type, old manuscripts, or typewriting, but a shade composed of minute black dots will appear over the entire print and there will be no absolutely whits areas unless they are produced by routing the plate or cutting out the high lights. (See p. 74.) The reproduction of an ordinary outdoor photograph requires very little handwork, except for re-etching, burnishing, and cutting the borders. ”

“ This description of drawing is applicable to wood engraving, to line engraving upon copper or steel, as well as to all the methods for automatically producing blocks for relief printing. The line method is also universally adopted by etchers in intaglio.
Successfully to prepare drawings for photographic reproduction it is essential that some knowledge should be possessed of the fundamental principles of {95} photography, as well as an acquaintance with the capabilities of the particular process of production which is to be employed. ”

“ Art would be too austere if it were not for the makers of etchings and lithographs, of pastels and water-colours.
Photography, the latest arrival in the ranks of the graphic arts, has the widest range of expression, and its technique is interesting as far as it can express mechanically and with [Pg 171] comparative ease gradations of tone that without visible touches, marks, strokes or lines melt imperceptibly into each other. But this smoothness of texture will also be its most formidable drawback. There is no chance for manual expression without destroying the charm of photographic texture. ”

“ Indeed, the greater number of magazines do not specify a preferable size because by so doing they discourage contributors of prints which are desirable, but not of the size specified.
If a magazine insists on having prints of one certain size the photographer should not be discouraged because his camera does not make photographs of those dimensions. The making of enlargements is now no more difficult than the making of contact-prints; if the negative is sharply focused and the lens of the enlarging-machine is good, an enlargement will not differ much in quality from a small print. ”

“ Photography has revolutionised many things, it has destroyed some of the minor arts, but in book production it has had far-reaching effect, much of which is good.
It has also opened up several new industries, and now photo-lithographs, collotypes, half-tone blocks, and prints from line blocks made by the swelled gelatine or other processes, can be so wonderfully like the original, that a page of old printing made by one or other of these methods will often deceive an ordinary purchaser. ”

“ When an impression is taken, the place where the sky ought to be will, of course, be plain white paper; a negative of clouds is then placed in the printing-frame, and the landscape is laid down on it, so arranged that the sky will print on to the white paper in its proper place; the frame is then exposed to the light, and the landscape part of the picture is covered up with a mask edged with cotton wool. The sky is vignetted into the landscape, and it will be found that the slight lapping over of the vignetted edge of the sky negative will not be noticed in the finished print. ”

“ There is a further complication of refinement required in the printing of illustrated work, which the increasing accuracy of modern times has not yet eliminated. The depth of the hollows in between the raised printing surfaces is very much less in plates reproducing photographic illustrations than in the case of type. It is found that “half-tone” work, as it is called, requires a degree of exactness in the printing plate, which at present it is impossible always to get. ”

“ It is the experience of most print-lovers that, starting with perhaps a mere casual liking for a certain landscape design, they progress gradually, in the course of years, to an unmeasured delight in the whole body of prints, and eventually find in them a unique source of repose and exaltation. ”

“ Still another application of photography, becoming every day more and more familiar to the public, is that which produces enlarged portraits, even life-size ones, from the old daguerreotype or more recent photographic miniature. As we have seen this process, a closet is arranged as a camera-obscura, and the enlarged image is thrown down through a lens above on a sheet of sensitive paper placed on a table capable of being easily elevated or depressed. ”

“ An example of beautiful photography, at the same time picturing an unusual or artistic subject, will usually find a market in a photographic magazine, as Photo-Era Magazine or a magazine such as Shadowland. The Architectural Record demands that its prints, although of architectural subjects, be artistic and beautiful. Indeed, there is such a wide market for photographically artistic prints of beautiful subjects that the photographer is doubly rewarded who can supply these, as well as hot-off-the-bat news-photographs. ”