Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art.

by P. H. Emerson

By focussing we understand, bringing the ground-glass into the plane which coincides with the sharpest projection of the image; the position of this plane varying of course according to the focal length of the lens and the distance of the object from the lens. Presuming, then, that the camera is in register, and set squarely before the object to be photographed, as can be determined by the spirit-levels, let the student proceed to focus his picture as sharply as he can without any stop. He must be careful that the swing-backs are parallel to the front planes of the camera.

Mental attitude infocussing.

Now the great habit to cultivate is to think in values and masses, that is, you must, in your mind, by constant practice, analyze nature into masses and values, and if you constantly practise this at the beginning, you will find that it becomes a habit, and automatically, as you look at a scene or a person, you will see on the ground-glass of your mind the object translated into black and white masses, and you will notice their relative values. This habit is absolutely necessary for artistic work, for it is by this analysis that you will learn to know what is suitable for pictorial art, and what is not; for if the masses and values in a picture are not correctly expressed, nothing will ever put the picture right. Our own experience has been that where this analysis has left an impression of a few strong masses, the picture has always been stronger when finished than otherwise. Now our student, having sharply focussed his picture with open aperture, must take his head from beneath the focussing cloth, and look steadily at his picture; fixing his eye on the principal object in the picture, he should go through this mental analysis, and at the same time note carefully how much detail he can see, both in the field of direct and indirect vision; and his sole object should be to render truly the impression thus obtained. |How to “stop down.”| He should then look on the focussing screen, and putting in his largest diaphragm, and using his swing-backs, and altering the focussing as may be necessary, see how truly he can get this impression, always remembering that the larger the diaphragm he uses the better. For this reason he should always begin with an open aperture, and work down to the smaller-sized diaphragm as needed. By working in this way, he will soon see what marvellous power and command he has over his translation, all by the judicious use of his focussing screen, swing-backs, and diaphragm combined. In focussing he must remember one thing,—never to focus so that it can be detected in the picture where the sharper focussing ends, and the less sharp focussing begins—as can be brought about by diaphragms. The sharpness should be gradated gently. |Ground-glass picture false.| He must also remember that the ground-glass picture is false and deceptive in its brightness, due to obvious physical facts. This is a point of great importance, which must not be forgotten when we are developing. |Camera obscura.| The ground-glass picture, though greatly admired by the Tramontane masters, and approved by Canaletto and Ribera, as Count Algarotti assures us in one of his raptures on the camera obscura, is not so natural and beautiful as it may appear from the toy point of view,—it is not what the artist wants, any more than he wants the pictures of an ordinary camera obscura, for if these pictures were satisfying in an artistic sense, every one could, by erecting a camera obscura, have the satisfaction of his desire, and there would soon be an end to the pictorial arts, photography included; for no one who loved this picture so dearly would want a camera to take photographs with, but only one to look through. The deceptive luminosity of the ground-glass picture must not be allowed to influence our normal mental analysis of the natural scene. |Rule for focussing.| As we said before, therefore, the principal object in the picture must be fairly sharp, just as sharp as the eye sees it, and no sharper; but everything else, and all other planes of the picture, must be subdued, so that the resulting print shall give an impression to the eye as nearly identical as possible to the impression given by the natural scene. But, at the same time, it must be distinctly understood that so called “fuzziness” must not be carried to the length of destroying the structure of any object, otherwise it becomes noticeable, and by attracting the eye detracts from the general harmony, and is then just as harmful as excessive sharpness would be. Experience has shown, that it is always necessary to throw the principal object slightly (often only just perceptibly) out of focus, to obtain a natural appearance, except when there is much moisture in the air, as on a heavy mist-laden grey day, when we have found that the principal object (out of doors) may be focussed quite sharply, and yet appear natural, for the mist scattering the light softens the contours of all objects. Nothing in nature has a hard outline, but everything is seen against something else, and its outlines fade gently into that something else, often so subtilely that you cannot quite distinguish where one ends and the other begins. In this mingled decision and indecision, this lost and found, lies all the charm and mystery of nature. This is what the artist seeks, and what the photographer, as a rule, strenuously avoids.

Example.

As this loss of outline increases with the greyness produced by atmosphere, it follows that it is greater on grey days and in the distance; and less on bright, sunshiny days. For this reason, therefore, the student must be very careful on bright days about his focussing, for on such days there is often no mist to assist him, but still he must keep the planes separate, or he has no picture. Let us imagine an example: A decaying wooden landing-stage stands beneath some weeping willows at the edge of a lake. From the landing-stage a path leads through a garden to a thatched cottage one hundred yards distant; behind the cottage is an avenue of tall poplars. On the landing-stage stands a beautiful sun-bronzed village girl in a plain print dress: she is leaning against the willow and is looking dreamily at the water. We row by on the lake, and are struck by the picture, but above all by the dazzling native beauty of the peasant girl: our eyes are fixed on the ruddy face and we can look at nothing else. If we are cool enough to analyze the picture, what is it we see directly and sharply? The girl’s beautiful head, and nothing else. We are conscious of the willow-tree, conscious of the light dress and the decaying timbers of the landing-stage, conscious of the cottage, away in the middle distance, and conscious of the poplars telling blue and misty over the cottage roof; conscious, too, are we of the water lapping round the landing-stage;—we feel all these, but we see clearly and definitely only the charming face. Thus it is always in nature, and thus it should be in a picture. Let us, however, still keep to our scene, and imagine now that the whole shifts, as does scenery on a stage; gradually the girl’s dress and the bark and leaves of the willow grow sharp, the cottage moves up and is quite sharp, so that the girl’s form looks cut out upon it, the poplars in the distance are sharp, and the water closes up and the ripples on its surface and the lilies are all sharp. And where is the picture? Gone! The girl is there, but she is a mere patch in all the sharp detail. Our eyes keep roving from the bark to the willow leaves and on from the cottage thatch to the ripple on the water, there is no rest, all the picture has been jammed into one plane, and all the interest equally divided. Now this is exactly what happens when a deep focussing lens and small diaphragms are used, the operator (for no artist would do this) tries to make everything sharp from corner to corner. Let the student choose a subject such as we have suggested, and put what we have imagined into practice, and he will see the result. Yet this “sharp” ideal is the childish view taken of nature by the uneducated in art matters, and they call their productions true, whereas, they are just about as artistically false as can be. For this reason, too, it must be remembered that the foreground is not always to be rendered sharply. If our principal object is in the middle distance, let us say, for example, some cottages on the border of a lake; our foreground, consisting we will suppose of aquatic plants, must be kept down, and purposely made unimportant. This is done chiefly by the focussing and stopping.

Mrs. Cameron’s portraits.

Among the few satisfactory portraits we have seen are, as we have already said, those by the late Mrs. Cameron. In all of these, that fatal sharpness has been avoided; her focussing was carefully attended to. |Newton.| The well-known miniature painter, Sir W. J. Newton, one of the first vice-presidents of the Photographic Society of Great Britain, distinctly advised that all portraits should be thrown a “little out of focus.” The falsity of focussing a head sharply is shown by the fact that by doing so freckles and pimples, which are not noticed by the eye, stand out most obtrusively, indeed a case is on record, where an eruption of small-pox was detected in its earliest stage by the lens, while nothing at all could be detected by the eye, though this was but partly due to the lens. This false focussing has brought in its train another huge falsity—retouching—of which we shall speak more fully hereafter.

Scientific diagrams.

Sharp focussing, too, by making objects tell too strongly, throws them out of tone, and so ruins the picture. When sharpness is obtained by stopping down, the diaphragm cuts off light, injures normal brilliancy, exaggerates shadows, and so throws the picture out of tone. Of course, if the object in view is to produce a diagram for scientific purposes, such, for instance, as photographs of flowers for a work on botany, or of fish for a work on ichthyology, or of butterflies for a work on entomology, the most brilliant illumination possible should be aimed at, and the focussing should be microscopically sharp, for such works are required to show the structure as well as the form. But, above all, the drawing should be correct, and this is obtainable only by the correct use of lenses, which, as we have pointed out, has not always been the case. If, on the other hand, the operator wishes to produce pictures of flowers, butterflies, fruit, fish, &c., the same rules hold good as for any other picture. |Fantin’s flowers.| As an example of the treatment of flowers, the student will do well to study Mr. Fantin’s paintings of flowers. We have never yet seen flowers, fruit, or still life artistically rendered by photography, though we have seen some diagrams to all appearances perfect, but in which the drawing must have been a little false. We have seen it stated by craftsmen who have produced diagrams of microscopic and other objects, that they were untouched (and rightly so), and that, therefore, these diagrams were artistic and true to nature. Of course, from what has been already said, it is obvious they were not necessarily true to nature (though, perhaps, none the less useful for that), and the statement that they were “artistic” arises of course from a total misconception as to what that word means.

Here, then, we must quit this subject, and we hope that we have impressed upon the student the fundamental necessity for exercising much thought and judgment and care in focussing, stopping down, and using the swing-backs, for these three all work together, and are quite as important as the questions of exposure and development.