Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art.

by P. H. Emerson

A very useful piece of apparatus is a clamp which can be screwed on anywhere, but especially to a boat’s gunwale, the taffrail of a steamer, a fence, and numerous other places whence good pictures can often be secured. Such a clamp can be purchased at most of the dealers' shops.

Setting up the camera.

Having decided on these matters, we will suppose the novice is now provided with camera and tripod. Now for a few details about starting. In setting up the camera on its tripod, one leg should be placed either between the photographer’s legs or exactly opposite to him, he will then find he can command the camera easily and alter its position with a touch. If, on the contrary, the legs are put up by chance, he will soon find his lens playing all sorts of gymnastic tricks, one moment looking up as if threatening the stars, the next studying with the deepest interest the ground at its foot.

Rising front.

The manipulation of the rising front is a power needing considerable study, for, by moving it, you can regulate the amount of foreground you wish to include in your picture. The limit of rise of the front is determined by the manufacturer, and the limit beyond which the student must not go is determined by the covering power of the lens he is using, for he will remember that every lens only covers a certain circle, the area of the circle depending on the construction of the lens. The usual method of describing the covering power of a lens is to give the measurements of the greatest parallelogram that can be inscribed in this circle. It will be easily seen that if the lens we use only just covers the plate, that when the front is raised, the lower corners will have no image exposed on them, and the higher the lens is carried, the more of the lower part of the picture will be cut off. As the image is upside down, the blank corners will appear in the sky of the negative. It is then obvious that if the covering capacity of the lens is greater than needed for the plate used, the rising front may be used to a much greater extent than if you only use a lens advertised to cover the plate you are exposing. It must always be remembered that if the optical axis of the lens be raised above the centre of the plate the illumination may be unequal.

Swing-backs.

The effect of the horizontal and vertical swing-back is identical, as is obvious if the camera be placed on its side, for the horizontal swing becomes vertical, and vice versâ. If the camera be set up plumb, the effect of using the vertical swing-back to its extreme limits (which are determined by the mechanical construction of the camera) is to lengthen objects in the direction of their obliquity and to sharpen them. What does this mean from an art point of view? It means that as a rule it throws the whole picture out of drawing, the relative positions of the planes are altered, the relative definition in the planes is altered and therefore the relative values, and therefore as a rule the picture, is artistically injured. This rule-of-thumb use of the swing-back arose, no doubt, from the practice of those craftsmen, untrained in art, whose aim was the production of “sharp” pictures. The only legitimate extensive use of the swing-back is when the camera is tilted before an architectural subject, when it is quite correct to have the ground-glass plumb, although for our part we deem the tilting of the camera to be undesirable. The swing-backs can, however, be used, with the greatest caution, in artistic work, and their value can scarcely be overrated, but it requires great knowledge to use them appropriately. The subtle changes in the drawing and composition of a picture which can be obtained by an intelligent use of the two swing-backs, make them, to those who know how to use them, most valuable tools. But if the beginner will take our advice, he will keep his ground-glass plumb, and his horizontal swing-back square, and never venture to alter either until he has thoroughly mastered his technique, and has some insight into the principles of art. The use of these swing-backs seems so easy, as of course it is, when “sharpness” is all the desideratum and embodiment of the operator’s knowledge of art, but in reality none but artists know their real value. By their means, the impression of the whole scene can often be more truly rendered, and things can be subdued and kept back in the most wonderful manner; and since we wish to get a true impression of the scene we are interested in, not a realistic wealth of detail, it can be easily understood how invaluable are the swing-backs when used cautiously. |On impression and fact.| Muybridge’s galloping horses are in all of their movements true, but many of these are never seen by the eye, so quick are they. On the other hand, the student, if he goes to the British Museum, can see in the Parthenon Frieze that the sculptors in some cases carved the legs of the farthest off of three horses in higher relief than those of the nearer horses, but if he goes off a few paces and views the carving in its entirety, he will see the true impression is gained; the nearest legs look the farthest off, and so the work is true in impression, though not true in absolute fact. And though the use of the swing-back makes the drawing a little false, yet if the lens we shall describe hereafter be used, the falsity is so very slight as to be hardly noticeable, while it is far more correct than any human hand guided alone by a human eye can render it. With art as with science, nothing is absolutely correct, the personal equation and errors of experiment must be allowed for, but the results are true enough for working purposes.

Pin-hole photography.

By perforating a thin metal plate with a minute hole, large enough only to admit a pin’s point, and fitting it to the front of the camera in place of the lens, an image will be thrown on the focussing screen, as the piece of ground glass at the opposite end of the camera is called. If the image be received on to a sensitized plate, it will be impressed on the plate, and can be developed in the ordinary way. Were it not for the great length of time required for exposure, it would be a great question whether any lens at all need be used in photography, but since the exposures required to produce pictures without lenses vary roughly from one to thirty minutes, this method cannot be seriously considered here, for, as we shall show, within certain limits, the quicker the exposure the better; nevertheless, the drawing of pictures taken in such way would obviously be correct. In cases where the length of exposure is immaterial, this method would be a worthy field for experiment.

Accidents to the camera.