LITTLE DARLINGS.
HALF A MILLION
PHOTOGRAPHS OF CHILDREN.
Words by Somers J. Summers. Photographic Illustrations by W. J. Byrne.
LOCKED away in the breast of Mr. W. J. Byrne, the children's photographer, is a secret which, when she has read this article, every mother of children will want to know. Let it be said at once, however, that her curiosity will have to go unsatisfied; Mr. Byrne has his secret, and wild interviewers cannot drag it from him.
SUNSHINE.
Ability to pose adults gracefully and naturally before the camera is an accomplishment admittedly rare; in the case of children, with the difficulties increased tenfold, it must be a gift. It is one thing to dump a subject into a chair and obtain a likeness, another to make a picture as well. And when a man has taken half a million photographs of little sitters, in as many poses, he may be held to be something of an authority on the subject. That is Mr. Byrne's record; he is to children what Rosa Bonheur is to animals, save that he uses neither pencils nor brush; he is a veritable artist with the camera. Some of the examples of his skill here seen represent, it is not difficult to realise, an infinity of painstaking and experimenting, while others tell of patient waiting, followed by considerable alacrity at the moment of a fleeting expression which he desired to preserve. Mr. Byrne's method is very simple; one half of his secret is soon told.
SHADOW.
"Photographing children," he says, "is charming work, but it can never be successful so long as the customary relations between them and the photographer exist. They usually enter a studio with much the same sort of feelings as they do a dentist's. They should be made to feel at home before the business side of their visit is reached. Instead of being at once placed in the 'operating' chair, they should be allowed to wander about, if old enough, at their own sweet wills and in any case become accustomed to their strange surroundings. Wild gesticulations, promises of chocolates, stories of 'the little bird,' and orders to 'keep like that,' only serve to produce expressions of wonder and fear. Personally I let the child amuse itself with new toys, and either pretend to take no notice, or else join in the game. This may go on for half an hour. Meanwhile, an attendant is quietly focussing an almost concealed camera, and when the child begins to prattle, I wait for an unconscious and happy expression, then snap goes the shutter, and the thing is done.
