For hand cameras, we should think, film negatives would be very useful, and for small studies such as they produce, would do well; but then such are not pictures. A picture must be perfect in all points, and for this reason the films will not as yet answer. They do show grain, say what people will; we have examined dozens of the very best, and that is our opinion. Besides this, they are liable to the defects common to paper, such as transparent spots, and the defects common to films, such as markings and stains, and in addition to all this there is the liability to injury of the negative after development, in the subsequent processes of oiling and stripping, if stripping films be used. The quality, too, of the picture is not equal to that of an ordinary negative. Why it is so we cannot explain. What the future of these processes may be we do not pretend to say, but for the present we feel assured that the finest quality of work is to be obtained on a glass support. For ordinary touring purposes no doubt the roller-slide and flexible films have every advantage, but with any but the art side of the question we have nothing to do. In artistic work, all hap-hazard results or accidental effects must be carefully eliminated. Lightness, printing from either side, and a good retouching basis are no considerations for the artist, he wants none of these things.
|Ortho-chromatic photography.|
There still remains, however, a very important point from the art point of view, as regards tonality, for as the student who has read his chemistry knows, the different parts of the spectrum act differently on the different haloids. The effect of this has been to destroy true tonality, thus a yellow flower comes out black if taken on ordinary plates. To remedy this dyes have been used which absorb the weakly acting rays, and thus has been made one of the greatest advances in photography, both scientifically and artistically. This ortho-chromatic photography has engaged the attention of experts, and Abney, Vogel, Eder, Ives, Bothamley, and Edwards are hard at work upon it now, besides many amateur scientists. We have been for some time experimenting in this direction for artistic purposes, having begun with Tailfer’s plates before any others were introduced into the English market. For the photographing of pictures Messrs. Dixon and Grey conclusively proved the superiority of the process by their exhibits at the Exhibition of the Photographic Society of Great Britain, in 1886. But the matter is different when landscapes and portraits from life have to be considered. It is with the wonderful protean aspects of nature that we have to deal when working from nature, and we feel the question is not one to be entirely settled in the laboratory. Our method is always to work out of doors, noting, as far as possible, the conditions and judging the results by the prints, and though such experiments are far from conclusive, we can at present say that the ortho-chromatic plates are nearly correct in the rendering of tonality, but not perfect, the reds overrun the other colours, and are too strongly rendered. In fact, the reds and greens are not perfectly rendered, and even if the correct values of the spectrum are rendered in a laboratory, this will not and does not give the relative tones of nature. This is the point which must be remedied. Undoubtedly ortho-chromatic photography alone will be used in the near future, but just at present it is not cut-and-dried enough for all practical purposes. The student, however, must use these plates. They are supplied by B. J. Edwards; and Dr. Vogel’s eoside of silver plates can be bought of Gotz, 19, Buckingham Street, Strand. So far the truest tonality that we have seen has been obtained on Dr. Vogel’s[Vogel’s] plates, and in addition his landscape plates require no yellow screen to be used with them, which is a tremendous advantage.
Final.
Thus it will be seen that in every operation the art-knowledge of the operator will tell. For example, let us suppose a camera set up with the lens fixed, before a beautiful landscape composed on the ground-glass screen by an artist, then let us imagine that two photographers proceed to take plates of the picture. After the very first operation of focussing, stopping and adjusting the swing-backs; a mighty gulf will separate the two pictures; the gulf widens as the exposure is made, and finally in the developed plates they are no longer the same thing. One may be a sharp, common-place fact, false in many parts, the other may be full of truth and poetry. Let a print be taken from each plate and presented to an artistically uneducated craftsman and to an artist, the craftsman will go into raptures over the sharp craftsman picture, the artist will do the same over the artistic picture, but the artist will not look for a moment at the craftsman’s ideal, and this little matter any one can prove for himself. Let the student, then, strive to earn the artist’s praise, and let him ignore the craftsman’s, and value his opinion on these matters at the same price he would value his opinions upon any other subject where taste and refinement are called into question.
CHAPTER VIII.
RETOUCHING NEGATIVES.
Definition of retouching.
Retouching is the process by which a good, bad, or indifferent photograph is converted into a bad drawing or painting.
Working up in monochrome, oils, &c.
Theoretically, retouching may be considered admissible, that is if the impression can be made more true by it. There are, perhaps, half a dozen painters in the world who could do this, but no one else. Nature is far too subtle to be meddled with in this manner. We have discussed the question with many artists, and their verdict is the same as ours. It is the common plea of photographers that photography exaggerates the shadows, but we think it has been shown that if photography is properly practised, no such exaggeration of shadows takes place, and if it did, retouching would only add to the falsity in another way. This retouching and painting over a photograph by incapable hands, by whom it is always done, is much to be deprecated. The result is but a hybrid, and is intolerable to any artist. One fatal fact in all painted photographs, and one which for ever keeps them without the realm of art, is that the shadows, being photographic, are black and not filled with reflected colour as in nature and as in good oil painting. The same remark applies to mechanically-coloured photographs. Such abominations, from an art point of view may, however, be useful in the trades, for pattern plates and such things. Consider for a moment the habit of working up in crayon, monochrome, water-colour and oils. What does it mean? and how is it done? In some establishments the practice is for a clerk to note down certain of the sitter’s characteristics, such as “hair light, eyes blue, necktie black;” these remarks are sent with a photograph, generally an enlargement, to the artist! He, in a conventional and crude manner, makes necessarily a travesty of the portrait, and for these abominations the customer pays from 5l. to 20l. Consider the utter sham and childishness of the whole proceeding, and remember that a portrait painter of the greatest ability can only paint with the model actually before him, yet these workers-up, who are not artists at all, can paint from memoranda made by a clerk. It is astonishing to think there are people in the world foolish enough to pay for such trash. Even the very best oil painting done in such a way is but trash, and if the photographic base is so destroyed or covered over that none of it shows, it must then be judged on the grounds of monochrome drawing or painting as the case may be, and a sad thing it is when judged on these grounds. |Posthumous portraits and busts.| It may be said, “But painters paint posthumous portraits.” Yes, they do, confiding public, but they paint them as sculptors model posthumous busts, but they do not call them works of art. We know several artists who are compelled by necessity and the vanity of human nature to execute these posthumous portraits, and we know, too, how they value such work. But it must not be forgotten what a gulf separates able artists from the third-rate “workers-up” for photographers. Moreover, true artists never attempt posthumous portraits on the top of a photograph, but simply use the photograph as a guide for modelling, light and shade, &c., a quite legitimate use, both for painter and sculptor. |Phot. Soc. Great Britain.| The Photographic Society of Great Britain is to be congratulated on the stand it has made in the matter by not hanging any of these abominations on their walls, and it is to be hoped they will stand firm and never admit coloured photographs of any kind until the great problem of photography in natural colours be solved.