Making Your Camera Pay

by Frederick C. Davis

There is one best finish for prints intended for publication: that is, black-and-white—never sepia—and glossy, burnished. Glossy prints are not much more difficult to make than dull-surfaced prints, the only necessary additional effort being the use of a squeegee plate, or ferrotype plate. The preference for glossy prints results from the fact that their surfaces are absolutely smooth and without grain. This enables the engraver to make a clearer halftone, for a print with a grained surface reproduces surface and all in the cut.

Glossy paper, when dried in the ordinary way, has a surface which is perfectly smooth, yet half-dull. When glossy prints are dried in contact with a ferrotype plate the surfaces are highly polished, and this gives the prints more brilliancy. Prints so prepared are ideal for reproduction-purposes.

Newspapers, as well as some moderate-priced magazines printed on news-print paper, and printed at high speed, require coarse-screened cuts; in these, fancy lighting is detrimental, and fine details are lost; what is wanted are broad masses of light and shade.

Some editors prefer prints which are untrimmed and printed to the very edges of the negative. Such prints give the editor opportunities to trim the prints as he pleases. And in the case of simple news-photographs and ones which have no claim to artistic consideration, it seems to be the preferable method of submission. Certainly, editors will not object to such prints, and they may welcome them in preference to trimmed ones.

Single-weight paper is always preferable to double-weight, even in the larger sizes.

Prints must be sharply focused and distinct—not "fuzzy."

A contrasty print is sometimes recommended as the best to offer; but that is a mistake. The photo-engraver wants prints with plenty of detail in the shadows, and with a tendency to softness; but with not a vestige of flatness. "In the making of the screen-negative and in the various steps of etching, he—the engraver—can introduce highlights into a rather soft subject; but he cannot produce detail in harsh lights and shadows," declares Photo-Era Magazine. The process of halftone-making has developed so that the reproduction can be made almost indistinguishable from the original. In any event, make the best print possible—a normal and truthful representation.

Having produced your print, add your name and address to the back of it, and then write, in pencil and on a hard surface, the caption that should be placed under the photograph when it is printed.

Some editors decry the practice of writing the caption on the back of the print; for the print goes to the engraver and the copy for the caption goes to the printer. The alternative is to write the caption on a slip of paper which should be pasted by one end to the back of the print. In any case the photographer's name and address should be stamped on the back.

An ideal print for reproduction and publication, then, should be: