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Full text of "Letters on landscape photography"

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NM^Ti 




I 



LIBRARY 

OF THK 

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 

Received J1QV.19 .1891 , 18- 



Accessions No. ..... Shelf No 



LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY. 



LONDON I 
PIPER AND CARTER, PRINTERS, FFRNIVAL ST>EET, HOLBOKN, E.G. 



LETTERS ON 



Landscape Photography, 



BY 



H. P. ROBINSON, 



AUTHOR OF 



"PICTORIAL EFFECT IN PHOTOGRAPHY," 
PICTURE MAKING," "THE STUDIO," ETC. 




LONDON : 
PIPER & CARTER, 5, FURNIVAL STREET, HOLBORN. 

1888. 
[ALL RISHTS 



PREFACE 



THE following letters were written to a friend 
whose study of photography enabled him to produce 
a technically perfect negative, but who did not 
know how to put his knowledge to pictorial use. 
They were not intended to point out a royal road 
to art, but rather to act as a stimulus to activity 
in the search for subjects for the camera, and to 
teach how readiness of resource may help good 
fortune in turning them into agreeable pictures. 

" 4 
funlridge Wells, 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



No. I. 

PRELIMINARY .. 



No. II. 
ART IN PHOTOGRAPHY 9 

No. III. 

THE PHOTOGRAPH EK'S CONTROL OVER HIS SUBJECT... ... 16 

No. IV. 
THE CHOICE OF SUBJECT 23 

No. V. 
ON THE MOUNTAIN 31 

No. VI. 
VARIOUS SUBJECTS 38 

No. VII. 
FIGURES IN LANDSCAPES 45 

No. VIII. 
ANOTHER DAY OUT 51 

No. IX. 
A TALK IN THE BILLIARD-ROOM ... 58 



CALLING THE Cows 18 

TfiESPASSEBS ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 19 

MODELS 3'2 

SKETCH FOR PICTUHE 35 

THE SWAN 46 

STEPPING STONES ... ... ... ... ... ... 52 

GATHEBING WILD HOSES 53 

AKTISTS 54 

THE MILL DOOK 56 



worlt dre no v/orfe, if Imagination amend 




""'" LETTERS ON 

LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY. 

Addressed to an American Friend. 

No. I. Preliminary. 

DEAB, BLANK, As these letters are to be published, I must 
call you Blank, your name as yet not having any interest for 
photographers. But we may be permitted to hope the time 
will come when your true appellation will be that of a 
shining light in the Art which has light for its source. 

I now propose to go into the subject of Landscape, more 
particularly as it can be represented by photographic means. 
As long as you were playing with toys ten dollar sets I was 
compelled to decline giving you any instructions, because I 
could have been of very little use to you. I have not a word 
to say against these cheap sets of apparatus, which make me 
wonder how they can be made for the money, and I have 
taken, and seen taken by amateurs, admirable little pictures 
with them; but serious art requires serious tools, and should 
not be satisfied with less than the best. You have now, 
however, got over the youthful maladies of the art the 



2 PKELIMINARY. 

chicken-pox and measles of photography and you have tried 
the usual remedies, such as endeavouring to find a means of 
photographing in colour, and a remedy for bad art in a new 
developer. You have also ceased to ascribe a lack of brilli- 
ancy in your negatives to want of definition in your lens. 
You have, in fact, got over the initial little perplexities and 
troubles, and are ready to provide yourself with proper tools, 
so that you will have no difficulty in following out my in- 
structions, and you will find your work interesting. 

You are an amateur with leisure, which gives you a great 
advantage. Hard working professional photographers can 
afford but little time for prosecuting the better parts of their 
art. I remember how surprised you were when I told you 
that I seldom devoted more than a fortnight in the year to 
landscape photography, and then had to take my chance of 
weather. But after all, shortness of time for actual working- 
has its compensations. I get through a great deal of work 
in the time, because I have everything ready, everything 
cut and dried for use. I am always on the watch for effects 
and subjects, and ideas of all sorts, and jot them down in a 
pocket-book, so that perhaps a subject or scene is a year or 
two old before I use it. But I have the subjects so "handy," 
if I may so call it, in my mind that they are ready for use 
at any moment. And I take care when I have my landscape 
holiday that everything shall be in perfect order, not 
omitting the models for figures, and that nothing shall be 
doubtful except the weather. It may turn out bad, but we 
" trust the larger hope." Indeed, even in the matter of the 
weather, we are not so much in doubt as formerly. We 
turn to the meteorological reports in the morning papers to 
see what kind of weather you are sending us from your side 



PRELIMINARY. 3 

of the water, and "govern ourselves accordingly." Al- 
though you never predict anything but storms, we learn how 
to dodge between them. 

Just as the proverbial millionnaire began his working 
life with half-a-crown, so has many a now well-known 
photographer begun his art with a cigar-box and spectacle 
lens, and it is not easy for the new generation of photo- 
graphers to understand the difficulties through which the 
beginner of thirty years ago had to grope his way. To 
a modern dry plate worker it would be like listening to a 
foreign language if I told him of some of the difficulties 
of the collodion process. "What does he know of comets, 
oyster-shell markings, and lines in direction of the dip ? 
In apparatus, also, the early photographers had to put up 
with what they could get, and what was not always very 
convenient for use. "Weight and French polish seemed to 
be the chief objects aimed at by the makers. Both 
camera makers and opticians were very stiff-necked in 
that generation, and would not allow that photographers 
knew what they wanted, so the camera was set up almost 
as solidly as if it were an astronomical telescope, and the 
lens was made with the definition of a microscopic objective 
with the focus all on one plane. 

"We have changed all that. "We can now get apparatus 
and lenses adapted to our better known wants. Cameras, 
especially landscape cameras, without any loss of beauty in 
their manufacture, have been made very much lighter, 
and lenses are made sufficiently optically imperfect to 
diffuse the focus more in accordance with what the eye 
sees. The workers of the present day, who are benefiting 
by these improvements, have no idea of the trouble photo- 



4 PRELIMINARY. 

graphers of twenty-five years ago had in persuading 
opticians to make lenses with what they called diffusion of 
focus, because, as the opticians thought they convincingly 
replied, the instruments would not be optically perfect. 

And now I come to what you really will require. I take 
it that you will not give your ambition at the outset too 
great a chance of over-leaping itself in the matter of size. 
The time will, I hope, come when you will feel the compelling 
influence of sufficient skill to make your work become visible 
in exhibitions, and you will feel you cannot do yourself 
justice in a less size than 15 by 12 ; but at present 10 by 8 
will be large enough for you. You can put nearly as much 
art in a picture of this size as into one of much larger 
dimensions, and the smaller size saves you a lot of worry 
and bother in porterage. 

First, of the Camera. This essential tool should be light, 
strong, and have all the necessary movements. It must at 
the same time be observed that in some modern cameras 
there are movements which are not at all necessary, and 
appear to be added only for the purpose of displaying the 
ingenuity of the inventors. These clever machines defeat 
the object for which they are intended. If a camera is 
efficient, it cannot be too simple. With a perfect camera a 
photographer of even small experience knows how it works at 
once, and what to do. The tripod stand should be firm and 
rigid, as well as light and portable. This you will easily 
judge for yourself. 

The lens is always considered the most important of all 
the tools the photographer employs. So it is, but I should 
like to say boldly that, within limits, I do not care what make 
of lens I use. It is as well to have the best your means will 



PRELIMINARY. 5 

allow, but there has always been too much made of par- 
ticular variations in the make of lenses. It has been the 
fashion to think too much of the tools and too little of the 
use made of them. I have one friend who did nothing last 
year because he had made up his mind to buy a new lens, and 
could not determine whose make it should be, and he was 
tired of his old apparatus. His was of the order of par- 
ticular and minute minds that try to whittle nothing to a 
point. I have another friend who takes delight in preparing 
for photography, and spends a small fortune in doing so, but 
never takes a picture. But I am wandering from my sub- 
ject. You will want a lens for general use. This should be 
of the Rapid Rectilinear form, and should not include too 
wide an angle. The focus should not be less than 13 inches 
for a 10 by 8 plate. You will find this lens useful for all 
ordinary landscape purposes as well as out-door groups and 
portraits. But there are some subjects which would be im- 
possible with a narrow angle lens, such as interiors and sub- 
jects in confined positions where you cannot get far enough 
away to include as much as you want with the ordinary 
lens, for this purpose you must have a lens that includes 
a wide angle of view. To be quite complete you should 
have a 10^ inch also, as well as a single meniscus, but this 
is not necessary at present. 

I need not go into the question of apparatus further. The 
experience you have already had will have taught you what 
else you will require, but I have one or two words to say on 
plates and developers. 

Find one good make of plate and learn all about it all its 
peculiarities, how long it takes under the developer before the 
image should appear, how long a properly exposed plate takes 



6 PRELIMINARY. 

to become rightly intense, and how it looks and stick to this 
plate. I don't say don't try any other at any time, but make 
the chosen plate the standard. To be continually using 
different makes of plates confuses the judgment, and you 
scarcely know where you are. I do not recommend the 
quickest plates that are advertised, because some plates are 
made so rapid as to be unmanageable. We ought by this 
time to be able to give the sensitiveness of any plate to the 
sensitometer, but I have never known one in which I could 
place the slightest reliance. Much confusion prevails. One 
maker's " 30-times" is quicker than another's " 40-times," 
while the names given to the plates are most misleading. 
The plate I like best and use almost entirely that is, when 
I am not compelled to take a very quick picture is called 
by its maker " Special Instantaneous," but is by no means a 
quick plate compared with some others. There is one thing 
about which you may be quite sure. If the plate is not 
covered with a good body of emulsion if it looks thin, blue, 
and poor you will not get the best obtainable negative 
on it. 

The last word I have to say in this letter is about deve- 
lopers. Many amateurs try every newly-suggested modifica- 
tion of the developer as it comes out, and fritter away their 
time and muddle their brains with weights and measures 
and homoeopathic differences in proportions. My advice is 
and I cannot state it too strongly, particularly as you wish to 
be an artistic photographer, and not merely a dabbler in, 
chemistry keep to one developer, and let that be as simple 
as possible. I have used one developer only since I com- 
menced with dry plates, and have not found any want of 
quality in my negatives ; but perhaps I am easily pleased in 



PRELIMINARY. 7 

this respect. This developer was suggested by Mr. B. J. 
Edwards, and is as follows : 

No. 1. Pyrogallic acid ... 1 ounce 

Citric acid 40 grains 

Water 7 ounces 

Ufa. 2. Bromide of potassium 120 grains 

Water 7 ounces 

Ammonia '880... .., ... 1 ounce 

To make the developer, take three ounces of water and add 
one dram of No. 1 and one dram of No. 2. This quantity 
should be sufficient to develop a 10 by 8 plate. There are 
occasions when the quantity of No. 2 should be increased or 
diminished. If you prefer any other developer, such as the 
carbonate of soda, which is now much used, I have no 
objection ; all I ask is, that you should keep as much as 
possible to one developer, and study it thoroughly. 

That is all I have to say on the technical or chemical side 
of photography in this place ; but don't mistake me. There 
are those who look upon technical excellence with indiffer- 
ence, but I would not have you be one of them. While I 
look upon great manipulative skill by itself as good work 
thrown away, there cannot be the least doubt that bad 
workmanship mars good ideas, and it is distressing to see 
beautiful conceptions wasted by the slovenly way in which 
they are sometimes set forth. It is fortunate, however, that 
great mechanical excellence is now within easy reach of any 
ordinarily intelligent mind. Plates and almost all other 
materials are now so prepared for the use of the photo- 
grapher, that with care and attention to instructions it is 
difficult to go wrong. But there is this to be said. Th* 



3 PRELIMINARY. 

student must have a good knowledge of what a negative 
really ought to be. He must also learn how the " values " 
of nature should appear in a print, and he will find that his 
mechanical means will enable him to get what he desires. 
This power of seeing values belongs to the art side of 
photography, and is not so easily attained ; but what T want 
to point out is, that when you can " see," there is no great 
difficulty in mastering the mechanical means of representing 
what you see. I do not, therefore, go into the preliminary 
chemical rudiments of photography, but assume your know- 
ledge, and leave you to perfect it from any of the manuals 
now published, and of which Abney's is one of the best. 




No. II. Art in Photography. 

AFTER several weeks, in which you have certainly not been 
idle, I have received the prints taken from negatives pro- 
duced with the new apparatus, and find them most inte- 
resting. They show that you have completely conquered 
the slight difficulties met with on the scientific side of 
photography, so wrongly thought by many to be the end of 
the art, and are now ready to try to make pictures with the 
tools you have selected, as other artists select whether they 
will use the brush, the chisel, or the graver. Your prints 
show a great approach to mechanical excellence ; they are 
fair to see, they are sharp, clear, soft, rich, of good colour, 
but they are not pictures. They tell us nothing, there is 
not an idea in the lot ; they are dead bodies, admirably 
embalmed, without a soul amongst them. I speak very 
frankly, as I could not help gathering from your letter that 
you think these prints, because of their mechanical excel- 
lencies, approach very near to perfection ; but I am anxious 
that mere executive dexterity should not have the first place 
in your mind. 

Touching this same " something" beyond mere mechanical 
perfection in photographs, I think I had better say what I 
have to say about it at once, and get it out of the way. 
That much vexed question, Is art possible in photography ? 



10 ART IN PHOTOGRAPHY. 

has been discussed over and over again, yet I have always 
been content to keep out of the controversy, and with 
endeavouring to show, however feebly, in my work, how art 
could be made of it. I have never called myself an art 
photographer that title is usually usurped by those who 
know nothing of art but have been content and proud to 
call myself simply a photographer, thinking it better to 
leave pretension to those who pretend. ^Nevertheless, I have 
always held a very firm belief, and had a profound faith, that 
photography used by an artist produces art. 

The lines of those who now try to put a little art feeling 
into their photographs are laid in pleasanter places than 
were those who made the attempt a few years ago. There 
are still some who deny that anything artistic can be done 
by a photographer, but it is my experience that the best 
painters now call the photographer " brother" when he 
deserves it, and recognise that he can put thought, intention, 
and even a vein of poetry into his work that mysterious 
something beyond the border line of hard fact which is felt 
perhaps more than seen in a picture. Of course, it is only 
those who produce art, in whatever material, who should be 
called artists. Original genius is one of the rarest gifts in 
this age of imitation. Anything absolutely new seems to be 
almost impossible. Emerson says : " The new in art is 
always formed out of the old," and unfortunately some of 
those original geniuses who create their novelties out of old 
ideas are not unlike that divine 

" Who took his discourse from the famed Dr. Browne, 
But preached it so vilely he made it his own." 

It does not seem to be rightly understood what art is. A 
man might be a good painter or a good photographer without 



ART IN PHOTOGRAPHY. 11 

being an artist at all. A man who paints is not an artist 
because he paints, or a photographer an artist because he 
photographs. Both are artists when they can produce fine 
art with either paint or chemicals, or any other materials. 
The fact is the critics have confounded the art with the 
operator. There can be no question that ninety-nine per 
cent, of the immense mass of photographs produced year 
after year have no claim to rank as art any more than the 
works of the million of art students in this country can rank 
as art. That, however, is no reason why art cannot be pro- 
duced by the camera. Every candid person knows it is, as 
usual, a question of degree. Art has been and is produced in the 
camera; the great difference is, that it is more difficult to pro- 
duce art with our instruments than with the brush. I should 
be rash if I attempted to define minutely what fine art is, but 
I will limit myself to accepting the dictum that " art is the 
result, in the first place, of seeing rightly, and in the second 
place of feeling rightly, about what is seen." I also hold it 
true that " art is interpretation by means of a creative idea, 
and never a stupidly exact copy." There are, of course, in- 
capable photographers, as there are incapable painters, but 
that is not the question. The question is, is it possible for 
a photographer to put his own ideas into his work, to alter, 
add to, or modify ; or is photography to be, as Mr. Mantilini 
would say, " one demmed eternal grind?" 

The camera may be a machine if you like ; I will go 
further, and admit that it is a machine, but you cannot be a 
machine if you would, and will not be able to prevent your- 
self putting yourself into your work for better or worse ; 
indeed, there is so much mannerism in the work of many 
photographers, that one who is used to studying photographs 



12 ART IN PHOTOGRAPHY. 

scarcely requires the names of the producers. A year or 
two ago I was one of the judges at an exhibition. The 
names of the photographers were not given to us, but I soon 
found we were talking of the pictures as the work of So-and- 
so, and So-and-so, almost as freely as if we had been supplied 
with the names. 

I have seen it argued somewhere, that the charm and 
value of art consist in every case of its difference from 
nature as well as its likeness to it. There is just a slight 
streak of truth running through the idea. The difference is 
often the root of our enjoyment ; old facts are presented 
to us in a new way and become more interesting, but when 
it is claimed that every step in advance from the mirror 
or camera to the master-pieces of painting and sculpture 
is a step of difference, we must pause. When the ' ' differ- 
ence" shows a purpose, an idea, or a sentiment, then the 
piece that is differentiated from nature becomes a work of 
art. 

There is more common sense spoken about art now than 
there used to be. There is not so much said about the 
"' awe-inspiring mysteries." The painter now kindly allows 
that others may care for and are able to see and feel the 
beauties of nature. More than twenty years ago, when the 
opposition to art in photography was at its fiercest, there 
was a capital article on landscape painting in a now dead 
review. Of course its tendency was against there being any 
art in anything but paint. It was particularly severe on the 
" Chemical Mechanic," and the author gives an illustration 
of how out of sympathy with nature the camera is. His 
illustration depends on the quality of the photographer he 
introduces. The mere fact of using a camera does not put a 



ART IN PHOTOGEAPHY. 13 

man out of tune with nature. That the exact opposite is 
the fact would be nearer the truth. The perfect and un- 
adulterated loveliness of the conceit, that none but the painter 
artist can see and feel nature, is delicious. This is what he 
says: 

" To begin with sympathy. In the midst of the forest 
when you are alone, and are beginning to hear the finer 
sounds, the turn of the leaf, the thud of the nut, did you 
ever feel as if you were an attraction there, as if all were 
drawing round you? I remember, when touring in Scot- 
land, swinging out of a wood on the top of the stage from 
Oban, into a wide space of sea and sky, with a glorious fore- 
ground of cattle and their doubles in the lucid shallows of 
the bay ; colour so pure, so bright, so precious, that it drew 
a grunt of admiration from the Highlander on the box. I 
was put down and disposed myself quietly in a corner of 
the wood, and was soon part of the colour, from the water 
to the sky. The ripple hardly broke louder than my pulse. 
Presently a stoat bounds into the road, and I had time to 
observe what enjoyment of life there was in the unalarmed, 
untamed step of the creature. The heron rose near me ; and 
as I was beginning to take it all in with half-shut eyes, and 
to remark how the powerful tones of the cattle, fawn and 
flame colour, white and yellow, blood-red and black, seemed 
to give infinitude to space a photographer walks briskly 
before me, and with an air and noise of satisfaction begins to 
open and adjust his box. I give you my word that the 
look of quiet horror that came over the scene was unmis- 
takable not horror exactly did you ever remark the face 
of a girl when she sets it? It was precisely that. Kot 
only did the stoat disappear, but I don't know whether it 



14 ART IN PHOTOGRAPHY. 

was the creaking of the machine, or the business-like stare 
of the man the cattle grew conscious and uncomfortable, 
and it was not without satisfaction that I saw a mist creep 
up from the sea, and steal away the shimmer and the charm. 
I left him some cows lashing their tails, some blackthorn and 
Scotch fir, and the average coast formation." 

All this is very fancifully and prettily written, and it 
serves to show with what contempt the painter treated the 
photographer twenty years ago. This sort of tip-tilting of 
the nose at photography as an art is only possible now with 
fifth-rate painters, or, in the press, with their friends, or 
those who have failed in art. 

Anyhow, what you have to do, and what other photo- 
graphers have to do who care for the status of their prof ession, 
is to keep pegging away at the production of good pictures. 
Taking pleasure in your work, but never being satisfied ; 
being always determined that the next picture shall be 
better than the last, your feeling for nature will increase 
and become more intense, and this love for and better under- 
standing will shine forth in your work. As you progress 
you will find that, metaphorically, the stoat will be no longer 
startled or the bird disappear, the machine will no longer 
creak, and who knows? you may feel that you are an 
attraction to nature, and she may draw all around you as she 
did round the young gentleman who lay down in the corner 
of the wood. 

You may console yourself further; you may feel that 
photography has taught art to artists. It is acknowledged 
that portrait painting has enormously advanced since the 
introduction of photography. Painters are now ashamed of 
the conventional absurdities of the pre-photographic days, 



ART IN PHOTOGRAPHY. 15 

when they " had plenty of taste and all of it very bad." 
The column with voluminous curtains dangling from the 
skies is now never seen. 

Perhaps the photographer has taught the lesson, as the 
Spartans cured drunkenness, by showing awful examples; 
but the lesson was learnt, and portrait painting is now the one 
thing we have reason to be proud of in English art. Photo- 
graphers had nothing but bad examples to follow in the 
portraiture of thirty or forty 'years ago, and most of their 
early faults in taste and composition were due to the painter's 
work, which was then worshipped as art, and is now looked 
upon with contempt. 




No, III, 

The Photographer's Control over 
His Subject. 

LET us now go into the country, camera in hand. Here, 
at the outset, I meet with a difficulty which places me at a 
great disadvantage. I shall have to refer to the aspects of 
nature, aud your nature differs, I believe, considerably from 
the kind we have in England, and I can only refer to the 
scenery of this part of the world . I have to confess with sorrow 
that I have never been in the States. I have had many 
invitations and a few chances, which I feel ashamed of not 
having accepted, but in spite of Shakespere's saying, 

" Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits," 
I have never been able to tear myself away from home, 
especially as I feel it impossible to disabuse myself of the 
doubtless erroneous notion that the more accessible Wales 
contains in itself all the elements of foreign travel moun- 
tain, lake, ruin, rock, and river, as well as a most picturesque 
seaboard besides a language which few but born natives 
can understand. 

This is of the less consequence, as when you were here at 



CONTROL OVER SUBJECT. 17 

Tunbridge Wells we took many walks together in the 
neighbourhood, and when I talk of heather, gorse, and whin, 
you will understand what I mean, and turn the application 
to scenes in your own country. Besides, were you not with 
me during that delightful^ fortnight in North Wales, when 
it first dawned upon you that there might be something in the 
claims of photography as an art ? But this came to you only 
after one of the two Eoyal Academicians, who were of the 
party, had fiercely advocated our cause (in which the other, 
being Scotch, cautiously agreed), and demonstrated that it 
was not the material, but the man, that produced fine art. 
It was there also where Gelligynan, Llanarmon, Dwygyfylchi, 
Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, and other names of places, were too 
much for your tongue, and compelled you to quote, with 
your usual readiness, the lines from the Ingoldsby Legends : 

" For the vowels made use of in Welsh are so few, 
That the A and the E, the I, 0, and the U, 
Have really but little or nothing to do ; 
And the duty, of course, falls the heavier by far, 
On the L and the H, and the N and the R." 

Above all and to me this is of the greatest importance it 
was there that you were first inspired to do or die as an 
artistic photographer, and determined to carry the world 
with a fifty- shilling set. When you assisted me to get some 
pictures it seemed to you so easy to do my part of the work, 
which you said consisted principally in shouting, while you 
were acting as cowboy, collecting the cattle together and 
worrying them about until I got the three white cows in 
exactly the position in the group I desired, and when you 
defied the big brindled bull like another Buffalo Bill 
while I photographed him. A short description of the 



18 



CONTROL OVER SUBJECT. 



photographing of one of these cattle pictures a type of 
man} others may be of interest to other readers than 
yourself. Here is a reduction of it : 




CALLING THE COWS. 



It is a much quoted proverb that everything comes to him 
who waits. In this age of hurry it is not everybody who 
can wait it is said to be especially difficult on your side of 
the water, so perhaps I am suggesting something you would 
find impossible ; but I waited for this picture as I have often 
waited for other subjects. Two years ago it struck me that 
there was the material for a good subject in this bit of 
meadow, trees and stream ; I therefore made a rough sketch 
of it in my pocket-book, indicating the cattle and the figure 
as objects I must get in somehow. I even noted down the 
title, " Calling the Cows." At that time there were no 
cows in the field, but there were some very pretty calves, 
which the farmer told me would not be removed for a year 
or two, so I could wait for them to grow. At the same 



CONTROL OVER SUBJECT. 19 

time the banks of the stream were so overgrown with 
underwood, and the trunks of the trees so covered with 
foliage, that the pretty glimpse of the river was lost, and 
the best part of the picture would have been obscured by a 
dense mass of alder leaves. Orders were given to have all 
this obstruction, as well as one of the trees, cleared 
away during the following winter. The next summer the 
hand of the hedger was too plainly visible, and the picture 
was allowed to wait still another year for the effect of the 
severe pruning to be outgrown. 

Critics say photography can have no control over nature. 
This erroneous notion has often been confuted ; nearly every 
photographer worthy of his camera makes some changes in 
the subject before him. To show that he may make even 
considerable changes in the aspect of a scene I give a view 
taken from the same spot, but with different figures, before 
the alteration : 




TRESPASSERS, 



Everything was ready last summer. The calves had grown 



20 CONTROL OVER SUBJECT. 

up into young cows, and we soon prepared a figure to call 
them. "What a delightful morning that was ! How you, with 
two or three other assistants, worked at getting the cows to- 
gether so that the right coloured animals should come in the 
right place, and that they should express the feeling of being 
called. How we failed again and again, and how we got 
them at last so that I did not find anything in them that I 
should care to alter ! Yet some people say : " How lucky 
you were to find such a beautiful group of cattle in such a 
picturesque place !" 

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance;" so 
also in picture-making, it is better to rely on the art which 
you may depend upon, than the chance which may fail you. 
Touching the figure calling the cows, do you remember the 
first time you saw her ? Do you remember the first day you 
joined as I took you for a walk along a rural lane, where you 
were surprised to find a poor girl in rags hard at work at a 
large and masterly painting in oils of the scene before her ? 
How I said nothing, but allowed you to admire and wonder 
if this was the ordinary occupation of the aboriginal Welsh 
girl, and how astonished you were when you found the poor 
tatterdemalion was a clever lady-artist, whose works are often 
well placed in the Eoyal Academy Exhibitions, and who had 
so often to act as one of my models that she found it more 
convenient to wear the clothes until we gave up work for the 
day? 

It was on this holiday you first learned to see. Our party 
consisted almost entirely of artists, and some of them were 
entomologists and botanists, all worshippers of nature. The 
talk, the thought, was all of nature and how to imitate her, 



CONTROL OVER SUBJECT. 21 

and there you had your first lessons in noticing, like 
Browning's Lippo Lippi, 

"The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades, changes, 
surprises." 

This faculty of artistic sight, or, indeed, the faculty of 
seeing anything, only conies with training. The ordinary 
observer only takes a superficial view of things. He is 
sensible that the view is " pretty." He may even go so far 
as to feel the grandeur of a mountain, but he can have no 
feeling of the exquisite sense of beauty that appeals to the 
trained mind. The artist can get very real enjoyment out of 
objects and sights in which the ordinary eye would only see 
the common-place. The average man only sees the most 
gaudy of the flowers and butterflies, the entomologist and 
botanist see realms of beauty that do not exist for the other, 
and so it is throughout all the arts and sciences. I will not 
further enforce this necessity for learning to see here, as I 
shall, I hope, have further opportunities of alluding to the 
subject. I will content myself with saying that to see 
artistically you must learn art. To do this you must learn 
what has been considered as the backbone of art for all ages 
composition. Of late years it has been the fashion with a 
certain school of painters to decry composition as artificial, 
false, and quite too old-fashioned for modern use ; but I notice 
that the more these painters emerge from their pupilage state, 
the more do their pictures show that they are glad to make 
use of the old, old rules. Rules were never intended to 
cramp the artist's intellect, and I have never advocated that 
the artist should be the slave of any system; but I know the 
value of what are called the Laws of Composition and 



22 CONTROL OVER SUBJECT. 

Chiaroscuro when used as a walking stick to help you along, 
and not as a crutch to lean upon. 

It is time we got out the camera, so I will finish with what 
I have to say in this letter hefore we begin our work. 

Enjoy your work, or drop it. You can never do good work 
as a task ; good photography, perhaps, but not good art. One 
of the best things said by "William Hunt, whose delightful 
" Talks on Art " are as much enjoyed in England as in his 
native country, was, " Draw firm, and be jolly !" 

You must enjoy even your failures, for one of the best 
teachers is failure. Like the poets, 

" Who learn in suffering what they teach in song," 

the art photographer teaches himself by his mistakes, and 
arrives at beauty through much tribulation. I don't ask you 
to so far enjoy your failures as to welcome them with joy 
whenever they arise, but you may rejoice that there is some- 
thing more to overcome, and that you will be the better for 
it. On the other hand, don't be too easily contented. Art 
is not easy, and it is only the incapable who are always 
pleased. 

To conclude, I will quote another "William Hunt old 
William Hunt, the painter of Birdsnests, Primroses, Country 
Life. His advice used to be, 

" Paint what you love, and love what you paint." 



No, IV. The Choice of Subject, 

A.S to the choice of subject. A great deal has been claimed 
for the extraordinary range of art, " from the hues of a 
cabbage leaf to the sufferings of a Christ." " Nay, there is 
nothing that man has ever dreamed, or hoped, or feared, 
suffered, enjoyed, or sinned in, which is not a subject matter 
for art," says Mr. Quilter, one of the most acute art critics 
of our time. Eut all who practise art must appreciate the 
limitations of the particular department of art which they 
practise. The painter in oil has the widest range and an 
almost unlimited choice of subjects ; the water-colourist has 
a narrower scope, so also has the sculptor ; and shall I be 
wide of the mark when I say, it is left for the photographer 
to show the greatest ingenuity in the choice of subjects 
in which to exhibit his skill as an artist ? 

The photographer should try to understand and be satisfied 
with the limitations with which he is " cribbed, cabined, and 
confined," and endeavour to turn them to his use, or 
rather find in the very limitation a certain fitness and use, 
because it clears away a vast number of impossible subjects, 
confines his study in a narrower groove, and enables him to 
give more complete attention to "the things that are his." 

We are in the habit of claiming for photography an 
unlimited range of subjects, from the infinitely little to the 
infinitely remote ; from the microscopic diatom dredged up 
from the depths of the ocean, to the infinitely distant 



24 THE CHOICE OF SUBJECT. 

nebula in star-packed space ; but there are some things that 
may be possible which are yet unaccomplished. 

In landscape photography, which is our present subject, 
there are one or two things that have not been done. For 
instance, have you ever seen a photograph in which one very 
common fact in nature is adequately represented I mean 
the effect of storm and wind on an inland landscape ? I say 
inland, because such effects are easy enough in sea pictures . 
The effect often seen in pictures by Salvator Eosa and 
Gaspar Poussin. The bending and swaying branches of the 
trees, the driven sky and the fluttering garments of the 
figures. The effect of wind is, unfortunately, too often to 
be found in photographs, always to the disfigurement of 
the picture, but no "lightning" or " special instantaneous " 
plate has yet been made that could enable us to do justice 
to the grand and pictorially fit effects I have suggested. 

Then, again, I have never seen a photograph which gave 
me any proper idea of mountains. Photographs of the Alps 
always remind me of toy mountains, and I want to see a 
child's Noah's Ark on the highest peaks. Perhaps it is 
because we now-a-days make such fun of what were once 
inaccessible solitudes. We go up Ararat on a bicycle, 
instead of waiting for the orthodox flood as jSToah did. 

There is another effect which has never been quite 
properly captured. In a mountainous country, when the 
sun has set to the observer it still shines on the mountains. 
The effect is often one of the most beautiful in nature, but 
the non-actinic colour of the sun's rays at that time of the 
evening has hitherto prevented anything like success in 
photographing this subject. As Milton says : 

" Yet from these flames, 
"No light, but rather darkness visible." 



THE CHOICE OF SUBJECT. 25 

However, this is a difficulty that may soon be added to the 
many conquered in the past. Orthochromatic plates will 
solve this problem, and when you have obtained a really 
fine example of the effect, here is a title for it (there is a 
good deal in a title) from Tennyson's new " Locksley Hall," 
but make the picture worthy of the line : 

" Cold upon the dead volcano sleeps the gleam of dying day." 

This reminds one of another important thing. Never 
give your picture a title it cannot support. I like good 
titles. I don't mind even if there is a bit of sentiment 
not sentimentality in them, so that it is healthy, and 
the boundary between the sublime and ridiculous be not 
overstepped ; but beware of anything in the nature of an 
anti-climax. If you have a picture in an exhibition, and 
the spectator, before seeing your poor little work, reads an 
ultra-poetical title, with perhaps a verse attached to it in 
the catalogue, his expectations will be so raised that when 
he sees the picture he may feel a cold fit of disillusionizing 
jb^thos come over him that he may remember against you 
for some time. 

While I am talking of titles, I may just add an illustration 
of how it is possible to go wrong in naming even the 
simplest subjects. I am told that the cows in the photograph 
of which I gave a reduction in my last letter were not 
cows at all, but are what are called in Scotland " Stirks." 
I am quite aware that the natives of that far country, with 
an independance which is perhaps praiseworthy but slightly 
puzzling, call things by names beyond the comprehension 
of other parts of the world, yet I believe I am almost wrong 
in calling these animals cows. Some of them may attain the 
dignity of cowhood by-and-bye. 



26 THE CHOICE OF SUBJECT. 

Now for subjects that are possible. 

It is a true saying that each student must discover for 
himself what is beautiful. It is not every kind of scene 
that appeals to the feelings of all alike. Some of us delight 
in particular kinds of landscapes, some like grandeur, others 
are content with quiet simplicity. " Each of us is con- 
stituted," writes Mr. Hamerton, with, perhaps, not a few 
verbal impediments, "with a special idiosyncrasy related 
in some mysterious way to a certain class of natural scenery, 
and when we find ourselves in a scene answering to our 
idiosyncrasy, the mind feels itself at home there, and 
rapidly attaches itself by affection." 

The student may be guided in his search for beauty, but 
it is not wise in a teacher to insist too strongly on what is 
picturesque or the reverse. Many painters will make good 
pictures out of subjects which would seem to be quite 
inadequate to others. Many of the greatest landscapes are 
of the most ordinary scenes. What could be more common- 
place than the scenery of Gainsborough's " Market Cart,' 7 
Turner's "Frosty Morning," or any of the pictures by 
De "Wint and David Cox ? A writer I have already quoted 
has written so much to the point on this subject, that I can- 
not help quoting him again. 

" When an old Greek made a perfect statue, he made it 
(so at least says one school of sestheticians) with absolutely 
no i'eeling, save that of enjoyment of its beauty ; all other 
meaning, all other emotion, was unnecessary. He wished 
simply to produce a beautiful thing ; he produced it, and it 
was good. But it is a very curious thing to note, though a 
little consideration will convince any art student of the truth 
of the fact, that there has never been in the world a great 



THE CHOICE OF SUBJECT. 27 

school of landscape painting, or even a great landscape painter, 
whose motive has been restricted in like degree to the beauty, 
pure and simple, of nature. Landscape painters have con- 
tinually sought beautiful scenes, and painted them with more 
or less ability ; but the greater the man, the more individual,, 
the more personal to himself, and to men in general, have 
been his pictures. And so truly is this the case, that the 
rank of great landscape painters might almost be determined 
by reference to this fact alone. Beauty sought per se in 
landscape has always hitherto destroyed itself; and people 
have turned ignorantly but determinedly from the composi- 
tions of snowy Alps, clustered vines, and deep-blue waters of 
Italy, to gaze upon David Cox's muddy lanes, sheltered by 
dark trees, beneath whose shadow the peasants plod wearily 
homeward ; or on a picture of some bleak expanse of rain- 
beaten moorland, across which a belated traveller struggles 
in the teeth of the wind." 

Don't be so conceited as to fancy there are so few subjects 
sufficiently important for your camera. Of all things, simple 
subjects obtain the widest sympathy. Simple things appeal 
to everybody; the commonplace is always attractive when 
well treated. These simple scenes have the advantage of 
exercising the photographer's picture-making abilities more 
than the more obvious and grander subjects. It is a greater 
triumph to find beauty worth recording in every-day homely 
scenes than in those of which every amateur can feel the 
beauty. Many a commonplace scene, as I hope to show, 
requires only the proper lighting, and perhaps a figure of the 
right kind in the right place, to make it beautiful. 

Let us, in imagination, stand on this wide piece of waste 
land, covered with gorse and broom and bramble, and 



28 THE CHOICE OF SUBJECT. 

experimentalize a little in " effects." "We are on high 
ground, and all around us is presented good middle distance 
bounded by low hills. Bits of broken foreground, one of the 
most important parts of a photographic landscape, are to be 
met with everywhere. Materials for pictures are here in 
quantity, but there is nothing very striking, nothing that 
shouts aloud, "Come take me!" Here is a chance for 
selection and treatment. Subjects are so plentiful, that the 
best picture other things being equal will be the one that 
is best lighted. Let us stand with the sun behind our backs 
and observe the scene. We find it, although beautiful in 
itself, pictorially flat and tame. The sunlight, being directly 
upon every object, affords no shadow. The sun, being broad 
on everything, allows no breadth of light and shadow. There 
is no relief, no mystery. The equal illumination flattens all 
before us. Now turn half-way round and you will have the 
scene lighted from the side. There is more relief, and this 
kind of lighting is very suitable to many subjects, but there 
is still more relief and still more picturesque effect to be 
obtained. Turn so that the sun is nearly not quite in front 
of you. Now we get the utmost amount of relief, and 
in this case breadth, for the great mass of gorse and 
junipers in shadow, their edges being only just skimmed or 
kissed with sunlight, form a broad mass of dark which is 
opposed to a grand wedge-shaped breadth of broken sandbank 
in sunlight, which fills nearly half of the picture. "We now 
only want a dark object, which shall be the darkest in the 
picture, joined with if possible a precious speck of white, to 
put the whole into tone, and afford us all the elements of the 
picturesque, balance of composition, breadth of light and 
shade, and tone. 



THE CHOICE OF SUBJECT. 2# 

I want to avoid, if possible, going too fully into any part 
of my subject, on which I have written at length in my 
little handbooks. About composition and chiaroscuro 
I have said all that is necessary in " Pictorial Effect," 
but there has been so much said about "Tone" and, 
what is nearly the same thing, " Values " of late years, that 
I may as well have a word or two on the subject here. 

" Values," or the right relation of one shade to another in 
a picture, appears to be looked upon by the young school as 
the newest and most marvellous discovery in art. " Tone," 
or the right relation of one shade to another in a picture, 
is as old as art itself." Some people especially those 
painters who call themselves of the naturalistic school seem 
to think this is the only aim and end of art. It is really 
only part of the beginning. A picture without tone can 
never be pleasing in effect, but it must contain a great deal 
more than this to be effective. 

The study of tone is of more importance to the painter 
than the photographer, althou gh a knowledge of it is of vast 
use to the latter. In photography, tone, like drawing, is done 
for the artist, if his work is properly accomplished, and both 
may be untrue if he does not understand his work. A scene 
may be distorted put out of drawing by a bungling use of 
the camera and lens, and the values in a photograph may be 
entirely falsified by under or over-exposure or development. 
A due appreciation of values, also, enables the photographer 
to choose and add to his views, as I have already pointed out 
in selecting the scene on the common. It is especially use- 
ful in relation to the introduction of figures. The lights and 
shades and leading lines of a scene may be all out of tune, 
but the introduction of a figure of the right value may 



30 



THE CHOICE OF SUBJECT. 



" pull it together." I cannot do better than recommend you 
to read carefully a little book I have already quoted, 
" Hunt's Talks about Art." The author is mad on values, 
and goes far towards making his reader mad also. It is 
delightful reading, full of quaint thoughts, admirable 
advice, apposite anecdotes, sound sense, and bewildering con- 
tradictions. 




No. V. On the Mountain. 



JUST the day for photography! The wind is still; not a 
breath shivers the delicate leaves of the Lombardy poplars ; 
the sky is not quite cloudless, for numbers of small clouds 
lloat lazily over the blue, affording varieties of lighting, either 
all sunlight, all shade, or, by careful waiting and observation, 
a little of each often useful when softness and sparkle are 
wanted in the same picture. I don't think I can do better 
than imagine you are with me. It may be, like a legal fiction, 
most convenient ; besides, you know the scenery. Fill your 
slides, look over your camera to see that everything is in 
order, for however sure you may be that everything is right, 
it is always best to have an inspection before marching. To 
forget a screw, if you have a loose one, and only discover 
your loss when you are miles from home and the view before 
you is " perfect," is to promote, possibly suicide, certainly 
profanity. There are some things better left at home if you 
unfortunately possess them. One of them is any kind of 
actinometer. I never knew anything but harm from this 
instrument when used to help to judge exposure. Another 
perfectly useless worry can be got out of " exposure tables." 
It takes all the " go" out of a picture if you have to do a 
sum in arithmetic when you ought to be concentrating all 
your heart, and mind, and soul, on your subject. Knowledge 
of exposure must come by experience to be of use. No 



32 



ON THE MOUNTAIN. 



calculations based on length, of focus and stop are of any 
service to a practical photographer. All other things heing 
equal which they never are they would be an infallible 
guide, but otherwise they are misleading. After the plate 
has been exposed, and the excitement is over, it would be 
useful to make a few notes for further guidance such as 
kind of plate, lens, stop, and length of time, also of the light 
and nature of the scene. 

Besides the apparatus there is another very important help 
to picture making, which is seldom thought of some models. 
It does not matter much what kind they are, whether old 
men, young girls or children, or mixed ; the one thing of the 
utmost importance is that they shall be appropriate to the 
scene, for there must be no suggestion of sham about the 
finished results. 




The illustration, which was done on a day that turned out 
unfit for good work with the camera, shows some of my 



ON THE MOUNTAIN. 33 

models. A painter is making use of one of them, while two 
others are watching the artist, and another is reading in the 
foreground. One of the many disappointments which happen 
frequently to the photographer is to go out fully prepared to 
do a good day's work, and to see the quality of the light 
collapse as he walks to his ground. 

We will have a lofty beginning to day. Let us go to the top 
of the mountain Moel-y-plas a hillock you called it, with 
your transatlantic contempt for little things, but it is 
1,442 ft. 8 in. high, according to the minutely exact calcula- 
tion of the Ordnance Survey, and at least affords us that sense 
of standing on a round world spoken of by the author of Adam 
Bede as one of the out-door delights she most cared for. 
Shall we find a picture here ? The hill is glorious with 
purple heather just coming into flower, green ferns and 
bracken, mingled with the orange and brown of last year's 
decay new life springing from death. As we ascend, we 
startle a brood of grouse, which goes whirring down the 
valley. We need not mind them now ; next month their 
turn may come. The land dips into valleys all around us ; 
to the north the lovely vale of Clwyd, beyond which, afar off, 
is a glimpse of the pale grey sea ; to the south, the Llanarmon 
valley running for miles in the direction of Chester ; and to 
the west, the grand range of mountains known as Snowdonia. 
"We are standing on the oldest bit of Britain, from the 
geological formation down to the Druids. The scene calls up 
memories on which every Welshman loves to dwell. There 
rise up before us in mental vision, Llewellyn and his 
dog, Owain Glyndwr, and .King Arthur and his round 
table ; but this is not what we are here for. The 
question of the moment is, Where are we to point our 



34 ON THE MOUNTAIN. 

camera? I cannot see anything that will afford a good 
subject. A magnificent view is before us, " palpitating with 
actuality," but it is beyond our reach. It would be 
impossible to give any adequate representation of those 
distant hills they would be dwarfed into insignificance, and, 
if relied on to come on the same plate as the foreground, 
over-exposed to the verge of blankness. The foreground is 
too insignificant in itself to make a picture, and the view, 
as aview, consists of the valleys and mountains. So we must 
remember the limitations of our art, and give up the 
impossible ; but don't pack up the camera, for here comes our 
picture. Here is a group of children, five of them, gathering 
bilberries : we will give up the mountains for the present, and 
make a picture of the children. We will send one of our 
young lady models to make friends with them and rub 
off the edge of their shyness. That she is dressed in shabby 
clothes will be in her favour; the children will be more 
natural and familiar with her. We will select a spot where 
the undergrowth is not too dense, but broken up with plain 
patches of turf or bare earth. You have already made up 
your mind roughly how the group shall be arranged, and 
have placed the camera approximately on the right spot, and 
f ocussed, pulling out the top of the swing-back before focus- 
sing, so as to get greater depth of definition from foreground to 
distance. The more exact focussing may be left until the 
group is nearly ready. 

Two children to the left of the picture, three to the right, 
and, to make a principal point, the trained model, not quite in 
the middle of the picture, but a little to the left of the centre, 
and nearer the camera than the others. Let the principal 
figure be standing with her left arm outstretched over a 



ON THE MOUNTAIN. 35 

large basket, looking to the ground on the left, as if searching 
for berries. She, knowing what is expected of her, will not 
stand in an awkward attitude, resting evenly on both feet, 
but you may rely on her, when you have given her the leading 
idea, to carry it out instantly. The sun is shining to the right 
front of the camera, throwing out the figure dark against the 
distant mountains, but touched with a brilliant edging of 
sunlight. Take care in exposing to lift the cap as if it were 
hinged to the top of the hood of the lens, for it will then act 
as a sunshade. If the least touch of sunlight rests on the 




SKETCH FOB. PICTURE. 



glass during exposure, the plate will be hopelessly fogged. 
It is with the children that the trouble comes. This, however, 
we get over with a little patience, taking care that each 
figure appears to be as unconscious of the camera as possible. 
^Now expose two or perhaps three seconds. . . That stupid 
child looked up, just as you took off the cap, to see why you 
'were keeping her waiting so long. Quick! another plate 
before she is aware you mean another. That is the picture. 
It is often the second shot that brings down the bird. 
To succeed with a picture of this kind requires quickness 



36 ON THE MOUNTAIN. 

of decision, and the faculty of seeing at once what ought to 
be done, and promptly acting on that insight. The photo- 
grapher also must be able, without hesitating or waiting for 
words, to say, or oftener to shout, the right thing at the 
right time to the models. In fact, the life of the picture 
depends on your doing absolutely the right thing in several 
directions on the spur of the moment. This facility can only 
be attained by long practice, good knowledge of composition 
and light and shade, and keen observation of effect. 

In the scene described above, the figures predominate over 
the landscape. We will now reverse the effect, and the land- 
scape shall be of the most importance. We won't give up the 
mountain now we have taken the trouble to climb so high. 
Let us see if we can get a good picture by taking it on two 
plates instead of one. Some people say that combination 
printing is not quite orthodox, but whether it is so or not, 
let us break away sometimes. It is awfully dull to be always 
correct. It is not easy to an active mind to be satisfied with 
' ' the priceless merit of being common-place." The difficulties 
of the subject before us are these : we have a near foreground 
of comparatively dark and non-actinic character, a blue sky 
with some small strongly defined clouds, a distance composed 
of grey blue mountains, and middle distance ; this latter 
point of the scene, however, is a long way off. The problem 
is how to combine these apparently incompatible elements, 
giving the least prominence to the foreground. No lens 
would get the foreground and distance together with anything 
like a passable focus, and no dodging of the exposure would 
afford both the widely different times they would require. 
These \ difficulties are easily surmounted by combination 
printing. Get the immediate foreground on the plate with 



ON THE MOUNTAIN. 37 

an exposure of, say, ten seconds (for you will use a small 
stop), and all the other part of the picture on another plate, 
with an exposure, say, of one second. These exposures are 
only approximate. It would be better in practice, in taking 
the distance, to move the camera forward a little, so as to 
take in more than is required ; this will facilitate the joining. 
I have fully described the various methods of combination 
printing which may be of use to the landscape photographer 
in " Silver Printing," and it would scarcely be worth while 
to go over the subject again. 




No, VI. Various Subjects. 

"WE did not finish the day's work in the last letter. Indeed, 
we have only taken one picture, and parts of another. But 
if that one picture is right, we have done a good day's work. 
For I do not count the value of the day's work by the 
quantity of pictures secured ; yet I, as do all other enthu- 
siastic photographers, like to get all I can out of one of the 
few days in the year that are perfect for the practice of our 
art. 

On our way up the mountain we passed a small lake 
Llyn Gweryd a wild tarn amongst the hills, on which we 
have often enjoyed pleasant sails and rows in the summer 
days, and fishing with the long line from the punt in the 
evening twilight of the days in the photographic time of 
year. Let us see what kind of picture we can make of the 
boat-house, which is a picturesque, weather-worn, wooden 
building, covered with decayed and moss-grown thatch. 
"We get out the old punt, in which there is room for ten or a 
dozen people. This we draw to the bank to the right of 
our picture, and it makes a grand object for our foreground. 
It should keep clear of the boathouse, which is to the left, 
and allow the boat and any figures we may have to appear 
dark against the shining waters of the lake beyond. In the 
middle distance is a tiny island with a tree or two on it, and 
beyond, a beautiful curve of the banks of the lake, fringed 
with low trees and undergrowth, and backed with hills 
which are far enough off to look pale and atmospheric. 
This is not a case for rustic figures, so our models are useless. 



VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 39 

But here come some of the lazy people from the house who 
find it too hot to paint or play tennis. "We will impress 
them into our service. We will take the camera a sufficient 
distance away to avoid making the figures too important. 
What we want is a landscape with a little life in it to give 
additional interest. The party from the house is coming 
nearer. Don't let them know what you are going to do. 
The punt is so placed that some of them, with their aquatic 
propensities, cannot fail to jump ahoard. It follows as I 
said. One of the men takes up a hoat-hook and walks to 
the head of the punt to steady it while the others get in. 
Another man now jumps in, and is helping a lady to get on 
board, while several others stand on the hank waiting their 
turn. Now is your time. Yell out, " Steady all, keep 
your places." They know what you mean, and keep as they 
are while you make a little alteration in the group not 
more than you can help, and without fuss. 

The man with the boathook should put some action into 
his figure, and the others should be intent on what they are 
doing; but don't exaggerate; don't let the figures look as 
though it were a matter of life and death to them to look 
natural. 

Nature does not always compose. Awkward lines will 
happen ; and there is that stupid native carpenter, who has 
been at work repairing the boat-house, and looks on with 
wonder to see what we are doing, standing just where he 
will come in the picture. Take him by the arm and run 
away with him. There is no time to explain, and he will 
understand nothing less. The camera should be quite 
ready. You know where all the points are, and have had 
time to focus, arrange the swinj&JgtfdffMti^iaake all the 



40 VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 

other little arrangements, so that nothing is left but to 
expose. " You cry out, " Steady all!" and in two or three 
seconds you have certainly secured a fine picture. 

You could have taken all this with a drop shutter, but 
let us see what you would have missed. 

In the first place, you must have used a large aperture to 
your lens, and as the figures must, whatever else suffers, be 
in focus, the lovely distance would have been blurred and 
disfigured. Now I don't mind a part of a photograph 
being out of focus when necessary, or when it is conducive 
to pictorial effect ; but this is a kind of picture in which 
moderate definition is required in all parts. Just a little 
softening of the distance through being slightly out of focus 
would not matter, but it must not amount to astigmatism, 
as it would have done if the full aperture had been used. 
But it is not the optical point that is the most important. 
Your picture is now the result of design, not accident. For 
if it had been taken instantaneously without the figures 
knowing what was going on, it would have been full of 
faults, and all the credit you could have taken would have 
been for the selection of the subject and laying out the 
punt like a trap to catch the figures all very creditable in 
its way, but not complete. As it was, you had to select 
your moment, improve the pose of the figures, remove the 
carpenter, and, as I was glad to see you do, all out of your 
own head, alter the oars on the ground so that they should 
not make objectionable lines, and improve the composition 
by arranging the heap of boat cushions and shawls as a 
balancing point. 

However tempting it may be to take another picture, with 
variations, of the boating party, we will refrain. There can 



VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 41 

be no greater mistake than to take several pictures much 
alike to each other, especially if you intend to exhibit. 
Your pictures become simply portraits of your model in 
various attitudes, or hesitating efforts, without knowledge, 
to get the best of your view. Always conceal the art if you 
can, and never show your failures. Get all the lessons you 
can out of your mistakes, and then destroy them. I once had 
something to do with an exhibition to which a number of 
beautiful little pictures were sent by a clever photographer 
on your side of the Atlantic. There was one real gem 
amongst them, but the artist had sent several other pictures 
of the same subject that just missed being perfect. The gem 
looked like an accidental success amongst a lot of failures. 
I saw them before the hanging was completed, and took the 
perhaps unwarrantable liberty of getting the inferior pictures 
removed. The gem got a medal which it thoroughly 
deserved, but which it probably would not have got if it 
had been surrounded by the various attempts to attain 
success. 

Now for another picture. Just to the left of the boat- 
house, rising from a bit of land that projects into the lake, 
are two beautiful specimens of the graceful silver birch, 
called here the " lady of the woods." The leaves of this 
tree are seldom still : to-day, when all Nature seems hushed 
in repose, affords us an opportunity we must not neglect. 
This must be an upright picture. No figures will be 
necessary, for the water lilies, now in blossom, and the 
reflections, will give us all we want to make up the fore- 
ground. We shall not require any help from the swing- 
back. The sun is nearly full on the trees, which, in this 
instance, is not unsuitable, and will give you a chance for a 



42 VAEIOUS SUBJECTS. 

quick exposure. A trout was rising a few minutes ago in 
the clear patch of water between the lilies. Wait a little 
while on the bare chance, and see if you can secure the 
surface rings he makes on the water. There he is, and you 
were in time with the exposure. I believe you will find 
them in the negative, but if not it will be no great matter, 
as the picture ought to be good enough without them. The 
lesson I want to inculcate is, never miss a chance. 

I see at a little distance down the valley a shepherd 
gathering his flocks on the hill-side. The large mass of 
sheep huddled together ought to afford material for a good 
picture. Let us walk towards them. Here is a pretty 
sight ! The shepherd is greatly assisted in his labours by 
his collie, who appears to understand every word and motion 
of his master, and I notice that the old dog is teaching a 
young one his business. This is a most interesting sight ; I 
have only seen it once or twice before. These Welsh collies 
are the most intelligent dogs in the world. See how the old 
one runs round the sheep, and then stands at gaze on the high 
ground to see that all is going well and that no sheep strays. 
Notice how the young dog is giving his mind to his lesson. 
Now the old dog runs in among the sheep and detaches 
about a dozen of them, then barks to the younger dog to 
bring them back. He has done this to give his pupil some 
practice. We must secure this scene, if we expend the 
remainder of our plates on it. We will place the camera on 
the rising ground opposite : the back horizontal and the 
focussing glass swung back, for our subject gradually recedes 
from us. The broken hedge and the little rill between us 
will give a good foreground. Put in a middle sized stop, for 
there is no great depth of focus required that the swing-back 



VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 

will not correct, and the exposure must be quick just on 
and off of the cap or the picture may be spoilt by one or 
two of the many sheep bolting. I may state here, as a 
general rule, that it is better to hare a little loss of definition 
though using a large stop, than to have disfiguring blurs 
through long exposure. For all that, I like a rather long 
exposure when I can get it with safety. 

Wait until the dogs and shepherd stand to take another 
look at their flock, then expose. I believe you have got 
them, but try another plate to make sure ; you may never 
again have such another subject. 

We have a couple of plates left, so will return to the lake. 
We must have a general view of the whole piece of water. 
We see it in a totally different aspect to that of the morning. 
The wind is now beginning to stir ; the clouds are gathering 
over the far end of the lake, leaving a vivid break reaching 
to the horizon. The breeze is also beginning to stir the 
surface of the still water in little puffs, a pretty effect easily 
secured. The near water is broken up by picturesque groups 
of sedges and deep green " horsetails," degenerate descendants 
of the gigantic Equisetum of which our coal measures are 
largely composed. Although there is sunshine on the fore- 
ground, the distance is in gloomy shadow from the lowering 
clouds. The feeling or sentiment of this aspect of the lake 
is distinctly solitude, which should be carried out as much as 
possible. The figure of a heron standing silent, solitary, on 
that point in the foreground, just clear of the rushes, where 
his dark form would show as a precious spot of dark against 
the white reflection of the rift in the clouds, would tell 
splendidly in the picture ; it would be a grand illustration of 
how tiny a point in a composition would be the making of it. 



44 VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 

This, however, cannot be. !Many herons visit the lake, hut 
it would he one of the thousand to one chances that some- 
times occur to the patient photographer who ought, how- 
ever, not to trust to chance for his effects. He may and 
must take advantage of the accidents of nature, but if he 
plays to win miracles he must expect to lose his time. Here 
the painter has one of his many advantages over us. He 
could easily put the bird in at home and so could we by 
double printing. One almost feels inclined to run down to 
the house and get out that old stuffed heron that has 
ornamented the hall so long, but the critics would call this 
illegitimate if they found it out though what difference a 
knowledge of how a picture was done should affect in the Art 
value of that picture I never could discover. In exposing this 
view of the lake, it would be well to lift the cap slowly, as if 
hinged to the top, and lower it slowly ; by this means the 
foreground will get more exposure than the sky, and you will 
save the clouds. 

Now, as all our plates are exposed, and the afternoon is far 
advanced, let us get home and forget photography for the 
day, if we can accomplish that almost impossible feat. We 
shall doubtless find the others of our party on the tennis - 
lawn, as it has become cool enough for a game before dinner 
dinner always followed by those discussions in the billiard- 
room, chiefly on art and kindred subjects, you so much 
enjoyed, and of which I may perhaps give you a sample in a 
future letter. 



No, VII. Figures in Landscapes. 



I left you we had just taken a view in which, we 
sadly wanted a heron. Our artistic instincts craved for that 
long-legged bird, but it was denied to us. By the introduc- 
tion of the heron the picture would have been raised from 
insignificance to a position of some importance ; it would have 
shown intention, acquired a meaning, been sensibly improved 
in sentiment, and the proprieties of composition would have 
been observed ; yet we did without the figure rather than 
use a stuffed one which we had at hand, and which, if used, 
could not have been distinguished in the print from the live, 
feathered, fish-eating biped. From a miserable fear of being 
found out, we spoilt our picture. We refrained from doing 
something which nobody would have detected, - and which, 
to blissful ignorance, would have been harmless nay, \ery 
good because we were afraid of the critics. How useful 
critics are to keep us guiltless of deception ! and that is 
the only moral I can find in it. 

Even a bird and a live one, too may sometimes be made 
to pose as the balancing point in a photograph. I once 
selected the corner of a small piece of water as a good sub- 
ject, if I could only get a " point " of light or dark in the 
right place on the water. A boat was not available, but 
there was a solitary swan that appeared to be very much 
interested in what we were about. After playing with him 



46 



FIGURES IN LANDSCAPES. 



and throwing him biscuits for nearly an hour, I got him to 
the place where he was wanted, when he steadied himself 
in expectation of more crumbs. Here is the result. 




THK SWAN. 



At the time of exposure a puff of wind ruined part of the 
water and greatly improved the effect by giving surface, as 
the reflections give depth. The swan makes a very small 
point in the picture, but is invaluable to the effect. I won't 
go into the reason why. You have read my little book, 
" Pictorial Effect in Photography," in which I have gone 
fully into the subject of the balancing point. I would 
rather that you should now know and feel that the picture 
is made by the swan. Imagine the scene without the swan, 
and you will at once see how little there is in it. All this is 
much more apparent in the photograph than in the little 
illustration. 

This would be a convenient time for me to enter a little 
into the question of figures in photographic landscapes. In 



FIGURES IN LANDSCAPES. 47 

one of his delightful papers, written always with rare 
humour, and nearly always with sound sense, my friend 
Mr. Andrew Pringle gives many reasons why the photo- 
grapher should not attempt to introduce figures. Writing 
in the British Journal of Photography, he says : 

"A very crucial test of a man's artistic power is his 
selection and arrangement of figures in a landscape. I do 
not wish to be hypercritical, and the stone I throw hits 
myself often, but I must say that in ninety-nine out of every 
hundred landscapes with figures that I see, the figures ruin 
the whole affair. They are inappropriate figures, inappro- 
priately dressed, inappropriately occupied, inappropriately 
posed, inappropriately and wrongly placed, and in most cases 
would be better at home in bed. Wherever figures are in a 
landscape picture, they are sure to catch the eye ; if they are 
near the camera, the eye can with difficulty look beyond 
them ; if they are at a moderate distance, they irritate and 
distract, unless treated with the greatest skill ; if at a great 
distance, they look like defects in the plate ; if they appear 
near one side of the picture, they are in almost all cases 
fatal ; while in the middle they are almost invariably mis- 
chievous. I have never myself learned properly to arrange 
figures in a landscape, and I prefer sins of omission to those 
of deliberate commission, so, as a rule, I leave figures out, 
and among the photographers of the world I cannot count 
more than three or four who ever use figures perfectly, and 
not one who is alivays happy in his arrangement. Among 
the hundreds of landscape negatives with figures in my pos- 
session, not one satisfies me in this respect, while most of 
them are actually criminal in their ugliness. The commonest 
faults are (1) Making the figures so important that one can- 



48 FIGUKES IN LANDSCAPES. 

not say whether the " subject " of the picture is a landscape 
or a figure subject ; (2) Making the figures so small as to 
distract and harass the eye, and to produce a sensation of 
superfluity; (3) Putting figures in without any connection 
with the landscape, or where figures are not wanted at all." 
The writer gives one excellent reason for figures in land- 
scapes, which should be all-suificient to the enthusiastic 
photographer. He says that to introduce figures properly 
requires the greatest skill, and is a " test of a man's artistic 
power.' Ordinary photography is so easy and so entirely 
mastered down to its chemicallist depths by Mr. Pringle, 
that he should be rejoiced to find there is still something 
left to call for his reserve powers. I agree with much that 
my friend says. It does too often happen that the figures 
are inappropriate to the last degree wrongly dressed, 
wrongly occupied, wrongly placed. All this only shows that 
there is a good deal of art-ignorance and want of taste 
amongst photographers, and that the great thing they really 
want is art-teaching. "What is the use of all their fine manipu- 
lation if they cannot turn it to a good use? All photo- 
graphers strive to get beautiful gradation in their negatives 
this is the one bit of art beyond which they do not attempt 
to go. Why cannot they go further, a step at a time, until 
they really learn how to " put squadrons in the field?" 
That figures attract the eye is true it is one of theii chief 
functions ; that they irritate and distract is, as Mr. Pringle 
justly says, from want of skill in the artist ; but how they can 
be especially fatal when they appear on one side of the picture 
puzzles me; figures are often very useful at the side. Their 
quality, though small in size, will often balance mere quan- 
tity on the other side. For an illustration of this see the 



FIGURES IN LANDSCAPES. 49 

little picture, "Calling the Cows," in Letter No. 3. Mr. 
Pringle would probably call this composition " juist a wee 
ae-sidet," but to my eye the mass of trees to the right is 
perfectly balanced by the greater pictorial value of the cows 
to the left. To leave out figures, to prefer sins of omission 
to sins of commission, is not worthy of the pluck I know 
Mr. Pringle possesses. 

Mr. Pringle points out the "commonest faults;" my 
answer as a teacher is, don't commit them. Not that I 
think the first of them a very great defect. I don't know 
whether it is necessary to anybody but a statician to know 
whether a picture is a landscape or a figure subject. If it 
is interesting, it will give sufficient pleasure without being 
tabulated. 

A landscape without a figure in it can seldom claim rank 
as a picture. I have taken the trouble to look through the 
exhibition of the Royal Academy for examples of pure 
landscape without figures, and have found very few not 
one per cent. I call to mind one or two fine exceptions of 
which Millais' " Chill October " is the chief, but their 
beauty depends almost entirely on the splendid power of 
execution. They do not translate well into black and white, 
and can therefore be no guide to the photographer. Of 
course there are some scenes which come under the head 
of landscape in which figures would be inappropriate or 
impossible, such as some aspects of Niagara, yet in one view 
of this tremendous scene I have seen a tiny steamer which, 
by contrast, added immensely to the realization of the 
majesty of the mighty rush of water, and I have seen others 
in which the impertinence of the figures have made me 
sorry that photography was ever discovered. There can be 



50 FIGURES IN LANDSCAPES. 

little doubt that "combining the aspects of nature with 
the doings of man "is at the root of all great landscape, 
whether painted or photographed. I grant that it is difficult 
to obtain good models, but it is a difficulty which can be 
surmounted. Then again I am often told by young beginners 
that they cannot think of incidents, cannot find anything 
for their figures to do. All I can say is, these things will 
come by constant study, and the more subjects an intelligent 
photographer may use up, the more will come to him. 
Ideas seem to come >vi;h practice. John Stuart Mill, who 
had more ingenious ways of making himself miserable than 
any dozen other pessimists, used to reflect on a time when 
all musical combinations would be exhausted ; and the artist 
also may look with apprehension to the time when all 
possible subjects may be used up. But he need not fear. 
It may be said of nature as of Cleopatra " Nothing can 
stale her infinite variety." 




No. VIII. Another Day Out. 

IT may be worth our while to take just one more walk with 
the camera. There is that lonely lane, famous for its wild 
roses, and the river, and the mill, 'and more particularly the 
miller. New and useful e xperience is obtained from every 
picture you make, if you study the subject earnestly, and 
put all you know into the representation of it. 

As it is near at hand, we will begin with the lane, and I 
know at least one subject there that is properly lighted at 
this time of the day. Climbing over a stile we come to a pic- 
turesque part of the lane where a small stream meanders along, 
while dotted across the stream is placed a row of stepping 
stones, beautifully varied in their forms. These stones are to 
be the subj ect of, and give name to, our picture. The sun shines 
irom the side, but slightly in front of us, casting the shadow 
of part of the hedge over the foreground, throwing up the 
stepping stones our subject into brilliant light. The scene 
as we now see it is pretty, but it is not a picture, it is only good 
material for a picture. It is even badly composed. There 
are several parallel lines running in the direction of the stones. 
This must be corrected. We must have a figure, and the 
place for a figure is obvious. We have brought a model with 
us. On the way she has amused herself gathering ferns, and 
is carrying the great fronds over her shoulder. Get her to 
cross the stones, and call her to stop at the right spot and 
lemain in the act of stepping. Try again and again until 



52 



ANOTHER DAY OUT. 



you are satisfied with the action of the figure. Don't be 
afraid of giving trouble, she is here only to obey your 
command ; you may obey hers when she changes her dress. 
In her present capacity she would take any trouble to help 
you, or she is not worthy of her office. Don't you see how 
that dark hat she is wearing is lost in the dark hedge behind 
it ? It is essential to make the figure stand well out from 
its background, therefore change the hat for a lighter one, 




STEPPING STONES. 



which you will find in the basket of odds and ends of rustic 
costume we always carry with us. Now you will find that 
the figure has converted a scene not worth photographing for 
itself into a picture. The composition is corrected, the 
parallel lines are broken and are no longer prominent, the eye 
is centred on a principal object. I almost think you may 
exhibit this picture if you do not muff it in development. 
Expose an extra plate for fear of accidents. 
Going up the lane we turn and find this scene. The scene 



ANOTHER DAT OUT. 



53 



is well composed in itself, and the lines of the pathway are so 
varied and picturesque, that we won't hide them by placing 
a figure in front of any part of them, although a small figure, 
someway down the lane, would he effective. However, we 
elect to have the figure rather nearer, for the sake of the 
blossoms. She shall be gathering wild roses, which will give 
us a title. Now when you are doing a thing it is as well to 
do it thoroughly, therefore I recommend you to gather some 
more branches of roses and add to the rather scanty supply 




GATHERING WILD ROSES. 



growing in the place for our figure. The girl must appear 
to take interest in what she is doing. In this case the upper 
part of the dress would have been more effective if not so 
dark in colour, but we have neglected to bring a lighter 
jacket. 

"We come to the mill just in time to catch the miller feed- 
ing his two calves, and they fall easy victims to our camera. 
A little way up the river is one of the artists painting, and 



54 ANOTHER DAY OUT. 

another of the boys looking on. They happen to be in 
exactly the right place, so we will not disturb them. Say 
nothing to them. They will pretend not to notice what you 
are about professional etiquette, I suppose but they see 
what you are going to do, and will be quite still all the same. 
This suggests that some subjects must be shouted to, and 
others left to themselves. 




Don't omit to have a shot at that splendid group of cows 
cooling themselves in that quiet pool. Half of them in sun- 
shine, the other half in shadow from the trees and bank, they 
make a fine effect of light and shade. Be quick, but don't be 
in a hurry ; there is nothing gained by going off your head. 
Above all, don't be tempted to under-expose. In this subject 
there is great contrast of light and dark, and it is essential 
that the cows in shadow should be very well defined, to give 
transparency and depth to the shadow, and that the lights 
should not be chalky. This can only be secured by sufficient 



ANOTHER DAY OUT. 55 

exposure. If you blow a dog whistle just before you are 
going to expose, you will find it will sufficiently attract the 
attention of the cows without making them move away. It 
may even have some effect on their whisking tails, which are 
always a nuisance. 

We are again in luck. Here comes material that must 
suggest a grand picture for our final effort to-day. Let us 
call up all our forces. The miller's donkeys are coming up 
to be loaded with great bags of flour for his boy to deliver to 
some of the villagers. The miller is always our friend, and 
will do anything to oblige us, so that we don't take up too 
much of his time. Range the two donkeys up to the mill- 
door, put some bags and the boy on one, and let the miller be 
loading the other. See that he does it with vigour. What 
more natural than that a couple of passing girls should stop 
to observe the interesting operation and have a chat ? We 
have two models with us, who are soon in their places. It 
so happens that the gamekeeper who accompanies us to carry 
our camera and plates is coming up from the river ; stop him 
in the act of walking before he gets up to the group. His 
dark figure is in the right place to carry the eye into the 
landscape, where in the distant meadow among the trees on 
the other side of the river I see some cattle, but I fear they 
will come too much out of focus to be of much use. Your 
models now all know their duty, and the only doubtful part 
of the problem is, Will the donkeys be still ? It is of very 
little use trying to attract the attention of these animals, so 
your only chance is, in fact, to take your chance, and several 
plates. 

In this case the figures are larger than is usual in landscape, 
and, perhaps, not large enough to make what would be called 



56 



ANOTHER DAY OUT. 



a figure subject. It may be either, or anything you like to 
call it, so that it makes a picture. There is much diversity 
of opinion as to what is a landscape. I once took a medal 
for Genre with a picture that contained only three small 
figures in a large landscape. This was at an exhibition where 
the exhibits were strictly divided into classes, and the selection 
must have been left to the porters. 




THE MILL DOOB. 



I don't know that it would serve any good purpose to go 
through other scenes with you at present. Every picture 
you do should be the outcome first of a deliberate purpose ; 
secondly, of the operator availing himself of every accident. 
These latter differ with every subject. I should like to 
impress upon you before we part that the world is full of 
beauty. This is an evident platitude, but it is not so evident 
that there is beauty in almost everything; it depends on 
how you look at it. It does not follow that every beautiful 



ANOTHER DAY OUT. 57 

thing would make a picture. A great deal that is beautiful 
in nature is far from adapted to pictorial treatment. I 
remember you once said to me that a good deal of this so-called 
beauty was not visible to you. That was probable ; you had 
not learnt to see. You also posed me by asking me what 
beauty I could see in chimney-pots. 

At the time I really had no reply. I could not defend 
chimney-pots, but it happens that I have since had a grand 
opportunity of studying these useful, but not very attractive 
objects. Perhaps I may be allowed to relate the personal 
experience, possibly more interesting to myself than to others, 
when I found that a little mist, aided by as much imagination 
as is within nearly anybody's reach, give beauty even 
grandeur to the much maligned chimney pots. It depends 
on how you look at it. Anybody who likes to think so has a 
good look out even if his view is only, like Dick Swiveller's, 
an uninterrupted view of " Over the way." 

It was my unhappy fortune, in the early part of 1886, 
to have to lie on my back for some weeks, after a remarkable 
exploit in vivisection of which I was the victim, in an upper 
room at the back of a large house in one of the London 
squares. There was a large plate glass window overlooking 
a spacious court, in which were some low buildings with 
flat roofs of lead, the back of some old delapidated houses, 
and a splendid collection of chimney pots, amongst which 
the chirpy London sparrows held carnival. As many a 
London photographer will remember, there was scarcely a 
day in town during January and February of that year that 
was not foggy, the nature of the fog varying from a delicate 
silvery grey mist on some days, through drizzle, sleet, 
Scotch-mist, pea-soup, to "the blanket of the dark" of 



58 ANOTHER DAY OUT. 

Macbeth, and the absolute darkness of " collied night" on* 
other days. Thus thinly or thickly obscured, the view 
underwent every variety of picturesque change. The 
chimneys sometimes became towers and castles ; the other- 
wise ugly and ignoble backs and roofs of houses, rocks and 
mountains the scenery of the Ehine without the river; 
and when the lead roofs beneath were wet with rain> it was 
not difficult to imagine the scene where 

" The castled crags of Drachenfels 
Frown o'er the wide and winding Rhine." 

Sometimes the rare gleams of the low sun struggled through 
the houses and illuminated the mist, then the backyard 
became a scene of enchantment, and when a touch of 
delirium came on, as it would now and then, the cloud- 
capp'd towers and gorgeous palaces of Shakespeare were 
nothing to compare with the mystic view. There is much 
pictorial virtue in mist ; even fog may be beautiful in the 
right place. 

I have seen that backyard since on a clear summer day, 
and all the beauty had vanished with the mystery of the fog 
and mist. Perhaps also I was in better health. 

Corot, the most poetical of the French landscape painters, 
is said to have seen a great deal to like in a London fog, and I 
know nothing to surpass in fairy-like beauty a still, misty, 
silver-grey day in the country, with a dash of sunshine on the 
foreground. 



No, IX. 
A Talk in the Billiard-Room, 

I PEOMISED I would give you something like a report of one 
of the discussions that take place at night in the billiard 
room during our annual visit to Wales. I fear I shall not 
be able to recall any particular night, therefore you must be 
content with a "blot" or " impressionist memory " of 
several. A smoking chat, well mixed with chaff, is not 
easily reportable or profitably readable, so I will omit a good 
deal that may not be interesting or teach you anything. 

White. Our photographer was painting to-day ; how did 
he get on ? 

Black. I was much complimented by the Miller, who 
takes an acute interest in art. His great desire is, he says, 
to go to London to see all the pictures in the Tower. He 
had never seen me painting before, and it gave him great 
satisfaction. He said in his best Anglo-Cambrian, "Ah! 
you do 'do them by hand too. It is well when a man 
can turn his hand to anything. You do yours by machine 
mostly, and can make many, but it takes the other gentle- 
man a long time to do them by hand I" 

White. Ante up the product. 



60 A TALK IN THE BILLIARD-BOOM. 

Black. There is the interesting and valuable result. 
Speak your mind, Brown, you are a great painter ; but as is 
often the case with great painters now-a-days, you don't 
know much about art, but we will take your opinion on 
the smudgey part of it. 

Brown. Oh ! I can't be bothered with such juvenile 
efforts. You ought never to waste good oil colours. Turn 
it upside down and begin another if and only if you can't 
find something better to do. Eut why do you bother your- 
self with paint ? 

Black. Eliger Groff says, " When a man forgets his first 
mother it's time for him to be born again," and this is not the 
first time I have painted. 

Grey. The Renaissance was a healthy time for art. 

Black. The appositeness of the application excuses the 
interruption. I don't see why I should not paint occasion- 
ally ; I acknowledge that disuse of the brush has made it 
more difficult for me to express my thoughts in the easier 
vehicle than with the camera. There was a time when 
painting was easier to me than photography, and I don't 
know now which is the less difficult, the machine as the 
Miller calls it or the brush ; if, indeed, the brush also is 
not a machine. 

Grey. "We are all machines in our way. We even we 
painters we can own it among ourselves, are all adepts at 
turning on steam and stoking. It is, perhaps, shameful , 
but nevertheless true, that we are most of us manufacturers. 
As I read in a provincial paper the other day : "The great 
painter turns out so many pictures a year, just the same as 
the machine turns out so many legs and backs. All his 
materials are provided for him, and are very convenient. His 



A TALK IN THE BILLIARD-ROOM. 61 

tubes, his easels, his fanciful brushes, his arrangements of 
light, all simplify the task for him ; and, perhaps, as he sits 
and paints, a faint dream crosses his mind of a happy day 
when artists will paint portraits by electricity, playing them 
out on the keys of a piano-like instrument." The writer 
should have made exception, but I am afraid he is right in 
the main. 

White. Really, Grey, I wonder how you can be so dread- 
fully candid. Success has made you reckless. It does not 
do to exhibit your thoughts in the nude in that barefaced 
manner ; you should clothe them a little. It is positively 
indecent to talk as you are doing. 

Brown. Especially now we have got the public to believe 
that painters are the only poets in art ; and that Black here, 
with his machine, isn't in it. 

Grey. You know I don't agree with you there. I have 
always maintained that there were art possibilities in photo- 
graphy. The difficulty has been in the ease of the process. 
The art work of the few in photography has been swamped 
in the rubbish of the million. All men are not born to play 
Bach's fiddle fugues, as Browning somewhere says, and it 
is reserved for the few to get the right tune out of the camera 
box. Photography has not had time enough to produce a 
large crop of geniuses. There are those who think that the 
really great geniuses in painting an old art like that are 
only lately born, and that " only we, the latest seed of time," 
know anything about it. I am an old-fashioned painter 
myself, and don't believe it. 

Brown. "Well, I think we are showing them how to do it, 
if I may be allowed to say so. 

BlacL " Thy modesty's a candle to thy merit." 



62 A TALK IN THE BILLIARD-ROOM. 

Brown. Go to ! irreverent youth. Tell me if anything has 
ever been seen in art like some of the suggestions of nature 
some of us give you. 

Black. Never ! Small things were never done so greatly, 
so few great things done. 

Brown. Your emphatic "never" scarcely sounds like 
applause. Let us see what the others have been doing. Ah ! 
Grey and White have been painting the same scene. Both 
of the pictures are like the subject, but they are a long way 
from looking like each other. This shows how man's mind 
comes in. The photographer cannot do that with his boxes. 

Black. Cant we ? As usual, you are perversely ignorant of 
what we can do. I never yet saw two photographs of a scene 
that were alike, and if I saw two by different men, and I had 
been accustomed to their work, I could tell you who had 
produced which. 

Grey. Different people see differently and translate what 
they see differently, it is astonishing to how great a degree. 
Ask any two men to describe the effect of no rain for forty 
days. One will go from Charing Cross to Yokohama to de- 
scribe it, the other will just walk round his garden and do it 
better. 

Black. That is what I claim for Photography. 

White. Take it and be happy. 

Brown, Eoth sketches are good. White's only wants the 
details of the trees, which he can easily get from one of 
Black's photographs, to make it a finished picture. 

Black. Just like you painters, everybody's property is your 
own. You only look on photographs as something you may 
possibly purloin. I totally differ on this subject. "Why 
should the photographer play jackal to the painter's lion, 



A TALK IN THE BILLIARD-ROOM. 63 

and collect scraps for him ? The photographer should be 
above this, and make complete pictures for himself. I would 
no more copy another man's photograph than I would his 
sketches. I don't mind painters " refreshing their memory" 
with photographs, but there are some who are not ashamed 
of stealing complete and perfected ideas. They soothe their 
honour by persuading themselves that the photograph is not 
the work of man but of nature, and nature, they say, is open 
to everybody. I am often pirated. Once there appeared in 
one of the London Galleries a large painting, copied "lock, 
stock, and barrel," from one of my photographs. After I had 
kicked up the demon's own row, and threatened to claim the 
painting, as I could do under the Copyright Act, the painter 
apologised for the " inadvertence ! " Ancient Pistol said, 
" Convey the wise it call," but the modern art euphemism 
for making a mistake in the ownership of property is "in- 
advertence." 

White. Do you object to painters photographing ? 

Black. I no more object to painters taking photographs and 
copying them than I would object to their making sketches 
with a pencil for the same purpose ; but he must be a very 
experienced painter with a fine memory for colour who could 
make a good use of photographs. It must be very deleterious 
practice for the young, immature student. He had much 
better keep to nature and draw and think for himself. Now 
for Brown's picture. 

Brown. There it is. If you see anything worthy of your 
approbation you can put your hands together, but don't wake 
the house. 

Black. It reminds me of the criticism of a famous R.A. on 



64 A TALK IN THE BILLIARD-ROOM. 

your last year's great effort, " and he had so much promise !"" 
Take it away. 

Brown. It is not composed artificially enough to suit Black. 
A picture is not a picture if not composed, or I have read 
what he has written on the subject wrongly. Composition 
is not the whole of art. 

Black. I agree with Brown for once. Chalk it up. In the 
endeavour to be simple and clear, I believe I am often too 
definite and precise. Many people think that I am trying to 
teach art when I am struggling to give them some notion of 
composition and light and shade. It is nothing of the sort. I 
know perfectly the distinction between the means and the end. 
I am afraid I am sometimes wearisome in the way 1 explain 
that rules, and laws, and principles, are only the skeleton of 
art, and not the living soul ; yet dense fellows, like Brown, 
will misread me. 

Grey. The principles of composition are the principles of 
common sense, and run through all the doings of civilized 
life from a picture or building, to a dinner or a company of 
friends. These annual holidays of ours, for instance, have 
been going on for twenty years, and how harmonious they 
have been ! never a hitch anywhere. This is all due to 
skilful composition. The components were selected and put 
together by an artist wfco understood composition. We have 
balance, contrast, light and shade and havn't we our 
"values ?" The result is a harmonious whole. 

Brown. Ingenious, but too gaudy. It would be interesting 
to know what you photographers do, that you claim to be 
artists and judges of art. 

Black. Everybody is a critic now-a-days, so why not photo- 



A TALK IN THE BILLIARD-ROOM. 65 

graphers? Touching the other part of your question, we 
invent, we select, we modify, we execute. What more do 
you want ? Modern painters do little more. We confess 
there are many things we cannot do. We do not aspire to such 
subjects as "The Last Judgment," or the "Battle of 
Waterloo." We have the sense, which painters have not, 
to avoid such impossibilities. But we can do many things. 
If nature does not suit us, we can alter nature, just as a 
painter does. 

White. Your alter-native is to alter nature ? 

Black. Yes, if nothing short of a pun will suit you, we 
even alter the natives when they do not suit us raw, or 
provide substitutes for them. Like that grim Earl Doorm 
we read of in the Idylls to-day, we compel all things to our 
will. See the changes I have had made in the river to suit my 
work. 

Brown. It is not every photographer who can lay waste a 
country side for the sake of his pictures. 

Wliite. And call it art ! 

Black, I only want to show our resources. I do not 
advocate an indiscriminate felling of timber. I could go into 
details touching invention, ., and how we can modify 
nature, also how we can modify our execution of it what you 
would call " treatment " but it would be the old tale over 
again ; we have had it over a score of times. You all agree 
with me, but, being excellent draughtsmen, you love to 
" draw " the photographer. 

Orey. Whether he is an artist or not, we must all agree 
that his affection for art reminds us of that ardent lover who 



66 A TALK IN THE BILLIARD-ROOM. 

worshipped the very smoke that came out of his mistress's 
chimney. 

Brown. Perhaps the analogy is nearer than you intend. 
You imply that the photographer gets no nearer the flame of 
art than the smoke. 

Black. It certainly seems to come under the head of con- 
tentious matter, but I am content to accept the compliment 
Grey intended. I am not to be drawn any further. I feel 
that my verdantcy begins to assume a russet hue. I am not so 
green as I have been. Good night. 



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PORTRAIT LENSES. 

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2 4,, 64 ... 24 6 

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5 22 18 ... 4912 

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2 18ft. 

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No. 1 4i in. focus, dia. 2Mn. ... 12 3 

2 6 in. dia. 3|in. ... 22 10 

UNIVERSAL PARAGON LENSES, 

FOR 

PORTRAITS, GROUPS, STUDIES IN 
STUDIO, & PANEL PICTURES. 



No. 


View 

Size. 


Group 
Size. 


Dia. of 
Lenses. 


Back 
Focu 


Prices 
in Ri?id 
. Mounts. 












8. 


1 
2 


8iX 64 
10 8 


Hx 44 

8*,, 4 


2 ins. 
2} 


84in 
10? 


s 6 15 

8 2 


3 


12 ,,10 


do 8 


2? 




13* 


i 11 5 


4 


15 ,,12 


12 


,10 


H 




16* 


! 14 17 


5 


18 ,,16 


15 


,12 


4 




20 


j 22 10 


6 


22 ,,18 


18 


,16 


5 




24 


! 40 10 


7 


25 ,,21 


22 


,18 


6 




30 


49 10 


8 


28 ,,24 


[25 


,20 


7 




36 


1 60 



WIDE-ANGLE LANDSCAPE LENSES. 

Working Aperture, U.S. No. 4, F.8. 



No. 


Size of 
Plate. 


Dia. of 
Lenses. 


Equiv. 
Focus. 


Price. 


1 


5x4 


U ins. 


5} ins. 


2 19 


2 


H *i 


u 


7 


350 


3 


473 


if 


8J 


410 


4 


10 8 


i! 


10 


4 19 


5 


12 ,10 


3 


12 


660 


6 


15 12 


4 


15 


7 19 


7 


18 ,16 


3 


18 


990 


8 


22 ,20 


3f 


22 


12 12 


9 


25 21 


4 :, 


25 


17 2 



PORTABLE PARAGON LENSES, 



LANDSCAPES, ARCHITECTURE, AND 
COPYING. 





Large . Medium 1 Small 


No. 


Stop | Stop I Stop i Equiv. 
covering j covering! covering Focus. Price . 


1 


3 X 


3 4 X 


3 1 5 x 4 3 in. i2 14 


2 


4 


35,, 


4 1 7i,, 44 1 4 


2 18 6 


3 


5 


4 i 7|,, 


44i 8 ,55,, 


330 


4 


7| 


44 8 


r 84 64 6 


3 12 


5 


8 


5 84,, 


64 9 7 j 7 


4 10 


6 


84 


64 9 


7 10 , 8 8 


580 


7 


9 


7 10 , 


8 12 .10 9 ., 


660 


8 


10 


8 12 ,,io iis ai io ;; 


7 4 


9 


12 


10 13 


11 '15 ,12 12 


820 


10 


13 


11 15 


12 18 ,16 15 


900 


11 


15 


12 |18 


16 22 ,18 18 


10 16 


12 


18 


16 '22 ,,20 25 ,21 21 


13 10 


RAPID PARAGON LENSES, 






FOR 


GROUPS, VIEWS, INTERIORS, AND 
COPYING. 










Price in 


Size of 


Size of 


Dia. of 


Equiv. 


Rigid 


View. 


Group. 


Lenses. 


Focus. 


Setting. 


4x3 


Stereo. 


fin. 


44 in. 


3 12 


5 , 4 


4ix 3| 


1 


6 ,, 


3 16 


6 , 5 
8 , 5 


5 4 4 
7{,, 44 


It:: 


74,, 
9 


4 14 6 
536 


84 > 6 4 


8 5 


i*,, 


n 


5 17 6 


9 , 7 
10 , 8 


8r, 3 


U , 

n 


12 
14 


6 15 
7 12 


12 ,10 


10 8 


2 


16 


990 


13 ,11 


11 9 


i\ 


18 


10 7 


15 ,12 


13 ,,11 


24 


20 ,; 


13 


18 ,16 


15 ,,12 


3 


24 


18 13 


22 ,18 


18 ,,16 


34 


30 


22 10 


25 ,22 


22 ,,18 


4 


34 


27 


28 ,,24 


25 ,,20 


44 


38 36 


WIDE-ANBLE 


PARAGON LENSES, 



Giving 100 of angrle for Photographing 
Cramped Positions. 





Largest 


Dia. of 








No. 


Dimension 
of Plate. 


Front 
Combin. 


Hack 
Focus. 


Equiv. 
Focus. 


Price 


1 


7JX 44 


l~^ 


34 in. 


4 in. 


410 


2 


84,, 6| 


li 


4- , 


51 


4 19 


3 


12 ,,10 


!4 


ef 


7 


6 19 


4 


15 ,,12 


2 


"4 


gi 


990 


5 


18 ,,16 


i 


11 


13 


12 12 


6 


22 ,,20 


3 


14 


154 


18 


7 


25 ,,21 


3f 


17 


19 ,. 


27 



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the model upon which nearly all the others in the market are based." Vide British Journal 
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Size of Square, with Re- 
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5x4 600 

726 

7 10 

8 15 

Since this Camera has been introduced, it has been awarded THREE SILVER 
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Brass 
Binding. 
16 
1 
100 
100 


Size of 
Plate. 
10X 8 
12x10 
15x12 
Thes< 


Square, with Re- 
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9 16 
11 
13 5 
j prices include one 


Brass 
Binding. 
... 140 
160 
1 10 
Double Slide. 



. HARE'S Improved Portable Bellows Camera 

Invented and Introduced 1878. 




This Camera offers many advantages where a little extra weight and bulk is not objected to. 
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ILLUSTRATED PRICE LIST on Application at the Manufaotory- 
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"The Studio; and "What to Do in It." 



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" The Art and Practice of Silver Printing; 



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" Pictorial Effect in Photography. 



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H. P. 



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