Photography studio

“ In spite of all these advances, photography was almost exclusively a studio proposition, when, in 1880, experiments were begun which were to result in photography that could be universally enjoyed—photography as we know it today. ”

“ Such things must be left to the individuality of each artist, and every picture-gallery in Europe gives the lie to all rules for a choice of size. The artist, must of course, suit his canvas or plate to his subject, not his subject to his canvas or plate.
Studio cameras. For studio, or indoor work, the camera may of course be heavier for obvious reasons, and a different form of support is necessary, the one usually adopted being very convenient for lowering or raising the lens so that the best point of sight is obtained according to the position of the model. ”

“ In the studio the matter is simpler than out of doors, because the light is not so much affected by reflections and various meteorological conditions; in landscape work, on the other hand, exposure becomes a most difficult problem, yet long experience can bring an intelligent man to give comparatively correct exposures, so that the resulting picture may be developed to obtain the exact impression that he requires, still, even after years of experience, he will at times find himself baffled and humiliated by failure. ”

“ In most cases he has graduated upon the stage, and has probably passed through all the phases between a touring company and a well-known theatre. As a result of this drilling he will have assumed a wide perspective. Sheer ability will have brought him to the control of the cinema-studio stage, where the work is most exacting, and where there is a very great demand for ingenuity and resource. Having mastered the intricacies and possibilities of the photo-play stage, and what can be done by photography, he will be a thorough master of craft. ”

“ Come into my bedroom and we'll arrange things of course, we work at night. Just this minute they are producing the 'Bartered Bride' in six reels and eighteen thrills a foot. A magnificently equipped studio, the public yelling for more how much have you?”
“Not so fast, Dick. It's merely some special work tonight, what you would call trick photography. I need a photographer, some lights, a little space, a microscopic lens and the complete developing during the night. ”

“ For portraiture a studio is a necessity for obtaining the best results. We shall very briefly discuss the question of studios, for we hold that, provided a studio be large enough and light enough, there is not much else to consider. ”

“ By no other method or process can the amateur succeed in producing pictures of p213 equal excellence, with the same outlay of time and skill, which is a peculiarly fortunate circumstance, as the tendency among amateurs at this time is to form themselves into clubs and societies for the exchange of their most beautiful and successful efforts as picture makers. And an exchange in the form of a transparency enables the receiver to command all other styles of pictures, through the negative that may be produced from it. ”

“ Studio lighting and outdoor lighting are radically different, and in a studio you have only to try and give an indoor effect. This has been the principle of all great artists. None but an amateur could fail to notice the falsity of lighting as seen in outdoor subjects taken in the studio. |Studio lighting.| On the other hand, in a studio you may get any effect of lighting you can for indoor subjects, for all such effects are to be seen in a room by a careful observer. |Adam Salomon.| Adam Salomon took many of his portraits in front of a red-glass window. ”

“ The quality of materials used, also, has always been of the best; and the constant aim is to make them excel in each and every p135 particular. They have no uncertain joints, no clumsy and unsightly proportions, no "fixings" to become detached or render the chair useless when broken. They are better adapted to the varied requirements of a modern photographic gallery—better suited to the prevailing styles of portraiture, and more in consonance with modern studio accessories. ”

“ The boys, and also the girls, have seized upon this fascinating pursuit, and the gardens and conservatories have been converted into studios, where every member of the family, including the baby and the pet animals, have been posed, and their pictures bear witness to the triumph and delight of the young artists. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His street-scenes are full of light and movement, and are treated with daintiness, delicacy of touch, charm of color, and grace of style entirely unmixed with any sophistication, pose, or artificiality. The charm comes simply from his own fine nature, which makes it possible for him to discover latent refinement where it would escape a coarser man. We found his studio filled with delightful studies, made in pastel and in gouache, of river views in France and England, soft, gray idyls of dawn and twilight. ”

“ After a roll of negative film has been exposed it is sent to the studio dark room for development. Every precaution is taken, of course, that no ray of light other than that which comes from the ruby lamp shall enter this room where films representing hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of dollars are being developed. ”

“ Here, too, she painted the portrait of her grandmother, studying closely the ever-changing face and sparing her subject as much as possible the tedium of sittings. A studio is the most delightful place in the world to those in sympathy with the artist. Here we have beauty, life, growth, creation, and, where a painter is concerned, the warmth and joy of color!
Those were happy days, yet there were moments when I remembered that canvases and paints are dead things, compared with living human companionship. ”

“ Much better results can be obtained by the photographer with paintings in his studio than in the galleries. Access to the studio must therefore be provided. Photographer's quarters on the top floor of the museum building, in some out-of-the-way angle not needed for exhibition purposes, are often arranged, but the mistake is made of building a two-foot stairway leading up to them by which large objects cannot be taken to the studio. ”

“ On the other hand, even among those who think of art as a means of interpreting nature, there are many artists who never put atmosphere into their pictures. Or, if they do, it is not nature’s atmosphere.
Then what sort of atmosphere is it? I call it a studio atmosphere, because it is manufactured in the studio. The artist, feeling the need of softening the hard outlines of his figures and of subduing any harshness of color, spreads over the picture thin layers of transparent, slightly colored varnish. ”

“ The sun will be in just the right position for making the film. It's in a thicket you know, and the light isn't any too good. That's the scene you girls are in," he went on.
"Speed along," urged Paul. "I've got to get into my uniform and make up a bit."
There is very little "make up" done for moving pictures taken in the open, and not as much done for studio work as there is on the regular stage. The camera is sharper than any eye, and make-up shows very plainly on the screen. Of course, eyes are often darkened and lips rouged a bit to make them appear to better advantage. ”

“ As an inevitable attending result of these principles, or practices, the structure of the whole landscape was ambiguous. The essential line and point were evaded, and one perceived that the artist had watched far more attentively than he had studied Nature.
At the same time the pictures produced in this studio were marked by qualities of great beauty. The peculiarly ethereal character of the vast bands of thin vapors made visible by the slant rays of the sun, and illuminated with tints which are exquisitely pure and prismatic, was rendered with surprising success. ”

“ In the room above the portico, looking down the drive and commanding the full range of those Berne Hills, we find Arthur Phillips in his new studio. Far different to that work-a-day room in the cathedral close, wealth has stepped in here to make art luxurious. This studio is a painting-room, drawing-room, library, all in one, as if the whole house had been ransacked for contributions to the master’s pet room. ”

“ It is the dearth of studios and the great demand for them that makes the price so high. Those who have had studios some time of course pay very much less, others put up with little holes far too small to paint a picture of any size. Carlo Perugini is painting in the studio of a friend, and that is a strip not large enough for one person. ”

“ With regard to the separate photographs of the sites, surely the reason for their inclusion is obvious. Photographic experts had stated that though the two negatives revealed no trace of any faking process (such as double exposure, painted figures on enlargements rephotographed, set-up models in card or other material) , still it could not be held to be impossible to obtain the same class of result by very clever studio work. ”

“ The only people who came at all were the peasants who came into town on Sundays. Of these, quite a good number patronised the studio, but, unfortunately, they did not always come for the photos they had ordered. They were not impressed by his skill when they found the studio situate in a woodshed at the back of Andreasen’s, with the camera perched on a cement barrel instead of a tripod. ”

“ The earliest, simplest, and most harmless photographic deception is the printing of clouds into a bare sky. But the retoucher with his pencil and etching tool to-day is very skilful. A workman of ordinary skill can introduce a person taken in a studio into an open-air scene well blended and in complete harmony without a visible trace of falsity. ”

“ But do not ask him to waste his time or the company's money in producing a scene the expense and bother of obtaining which is out of all proportion to the importance of the rest of the picture. And do not forget that the camera, wonderful as it is, cannot and does not do everything that it seems to do. In other words, do not mistake an effect produced by trick photography for one that is merely the result of exceptional care and work on the part of both cameraman and director. ”

“ Another company has an open-air gallery large enough for whole troops of cavalry to maneuver before the camera, or where the various evolutions of a working fire department may be photographed.
Of course, when the pictures are taken in a studio or place prepared for the work the photographic part is easy—the camera man sets up his machine and turns the crank while the performers do the rest. But some extra-ordinary pictures have been taken when the photographer had to seek his scene and work his machine under trying and even dangerous circumstances. ”

“ Were time and money no object, I would have each man or woman assistant in the photographic studio qualified to pose, focus, develop, retouch, print, and mount, with a complete knowledge of all the branches, and a thorough artistic knowledge besides. I would also have them all consider nothing too trivial for their talents in the progress of the photograph, but each to take alternately their turn at the different departments with their own plates ”

“ Lastly, I shall look beyond the needs of any individual library, or any particular class of customers, and endeavour to point out ways in which a national photographic institution, preferably, I think, placed in connection with the British Museum, might subserve public objects of paramount importance.
I have said that, to be adopted to any purpose by a public institution, photography must become a portion of the organism of the institution itself. That is, the institution must be the photographer's employer, not his customer. ”

“ The photographer with a wide angle lens took in all that was in my studio—to "make-believe," as the camera [Pg 136] invariably does, that the apartment was six times larger than it really is. But the artist, who should idealise if the photographer could not, who so sadly interfered with my enjoying my tea, who was sent to make the most of me to raise the enthusiasm of the readers and to increase the subscriptions, succeeded in doing with his pencil what no interviewer has done with his pen,—he made me wince! ”

“ Still: a photograph taken in the most famous studio in London is still a photograph equally with the spotted and misty effort of the amateur, and no amount of "touching-up" or "finishing," however patient it may be, will turn a photograph into a work of art. And, in like manner, no labour, no care, no polishing of the phrase, no patience in investigation, no artifice in plot or in construction will ever make "reading-matter" into fine literature. ”

“ The positive film bearing the combined sound and picture records is a product of the photographic art. The method claimed for producing it relates exclusively to that art. It is neither a method of sound recording or sound reproduction. It claims only a process every step in which is an application of the art of photography; simultaneous exposure of the negatives, their separate development, and printing from them a single positive film. ”