How To Have One’s Portrait Taken
Having one’s portrait taken is no longer an isolated event in one’s life. It has become a kind of domestic and social duty, to which even though personally opposed, one must gracefully submit, unless he would incur the odium of neglecting the wishes of his family circle and the complimentary requests of his acquaintances.
It would seem at first sight that nothing is easier than to go to a photographer’s and get a good likeness. Nothing is really more uncertain and disappointing. In turning over the albums of our friends, how often we pass the faces of acquaintances and don’t know them at all! How is this? Simply because, at the moment when the picture was taken, the original was unlike herself. She was nervous, her head was 255 screwed in a vise, her position had been selected for her, and she had been ordered to look at an indicated spot, and keep still. Such a position was like nothing in her real life, and the expression on the face was just as foreign. The features might be perfectly correct, but that inscrutable something which individualizes the face was lacking.
Now if the amenities of social life require us to have our pictures done, “it were as well they were well done,” and much toward this end lies within the sitter’s choice and power.
First as to the selection of the artist. It is a great mistake to imagine that photography is a mere mechanical trade. There is as much difference between two photographers as between two engravers. Nor will a fine lens alone produce a good picture. The pose of the sitter, the disposition of lights and shadows, the arrangement of drapery, are of the greatest consequence. A good artist has almost unlimited power in this direction. He can render certain parts thinner by plunging them into half-tone or by burying their outline in the shade, and he 256 can deepen and augment other portions by surrounding them with light. Thus, if the head is too small for beauty, he can increase its size by throwing the light on the face; and if it is too large, he can diminish it by choosing a tint that would throw one half of the face into shadow.
If the artist has a lens which perpetually changes its focus, the result is a portrait in which the outlines are delicately soft and undefined. A view lens, or one that is perfectly flat, occupies nearly two minutes to complete the likeness, and the consequence is, the sitter moves slightly, and the required softness is obtained in an accidental manner. It is evident, therefore, that the most rapidly taken pictures are not necessarily the best. Then people have a hundred different aspects, and to seize the best and reproduce it is the function of genius, and not of chemicals.
Having selected a good artist, and one, also, whose position has enabled him to secure the best tools, the next duty of the sitter regards herself and her costume. In photography a good portrait may be quite nullified by the choice of bad colors in dress. 257 Finery is the curse of the artist, but if he works in oils he can leave it out or tone it down. In photography, as the sitter comes, so she must be taken, with all her excellences or her imperfections on her head.
The colors most luminous to the eye, as red, yellow, orange, are almost without action; green acts feebly; blue and violet are reproduced very promptly. If, then, a person of very fair complexion were taken in green, orange, or red, the lights would be very prominent, and the portrait lack energy and detail. The best of all dresses is black silk,—silk, not bombazine, or merino, or any cottony mixture, as the admirable effect depends on the gloss of the silk, which makes it full of subdued and reflected lights that give motion and play to the drapery. A dead-black dress without this shimmer would be represented by a uniform blotch; a white dress looks like a flat film of wax or a piece of card-board; but a combination of black net or lace over white is very effective, though rarely ventured upon. An admirable softness and depth of color are given to photographs by sealskin and velvet.