PhotoHistory

From: THE BARNET BOOK OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Pictorial Photography (Part 4 of 4)

By: A. Horsley Hinton, 1898

Compare for a moment the two photographs, fig. 1 and fig. 2.

The first is by no means an extreme case of the ordinary photograph, and notice that although the composition is fairly good as far as grouping goes, there is an absence of any quality which might make one feel anything outside the bare recognition of the facts depicted, but the second, if it be good at all, must depend for admiration on a certain amount of sentiment which it suggests or creates. You will notice that in the first there is no sense of distance, and although a church tower, behind the masts of the boats, is half a mile or so away it does not possess the “tone” and veiling of atmosphere which would make it appear distant. Every part of the view seems equally near, or nearly so; the eye wanders over the whole, alighting on details here and there which interest and amuse, yet there is an absence of just that breadth which is noticeably present in the second example.

Now let it be distinctly understood that detail, its omission or suppression, and its introduction or sharp delineation, is not a question of lens focus only, or even chiefly, but it is largely a question of light. Imagine the photograph, fig. 1, with the greater part of the detail taken out so that the quay, the houses, the shore, etc. were just broad masses of lighter or darker tone, should we not then get a composition which would be less disturbing, more compact, more concentrated in interest? Is not this the case in fig. 2, in which detail is almost entirely absent? And yet detail could not have been truthfully introduced in this photograph, because with the light in the position it is, and in the misty evening air, no detail was there to reproduce; it was the fact that objects ranged themselves in masses one against the other, leaving room for imagination and creating ideas that determined its selection and its consequent portrayal.

In many cases a clear and sharp delineation of details will perhaps be desirable, not however for the sake of showing detail, but just so far as the production of the effect may require; on the other hand, just the full amount of detail that a lens will give is by no means always wanted.

Lenses were not invented for pictorial purposes, and therefore there is no reason for concluding that what the lens gives is necessarily right, for remember that we started with the distinct understanding that we were merely applying to a certain purpose just so much of the photographic process as we considered we needed; because I have the means of traveling at sixty miles an hour there is no reason why I should not apply the same means of locomotion to coaching a pedestrian at a tenth of that speed if I choose. It may be said that in the two photographs referred to the comparison is not a fair one, because so much depends on the sky. Granted that much in the second example does depend on the sky, which is an essential part of the picture, and indeed one cause of its very existence, but in the other (fig. 1) the presence of clouds would not improve the pictorial faults to which reference has been made. As a mere record or portrayal of Old Woodbridge Quay, the absence of clouds is as much a characteristic of its particular species, as the clouds in the second one are inseparable from its existence.

So, but little more than half hinting at the principles involved in the due suppression of unnecessary details, and the elimination of undesirable objects in order to obtain breadth, and having said but little as to the preservation of correct relative values or tones, I must pass on.

Every corner of nature’s broad expanse is, as it were, enveloped in atmosphere, and invisible as we are commonly in the habit of considering it to be, it affects to a greater or less degree everything we see, and the visible atmosphere is often responsible for some of nature’s most beautiful and most appealing aspects. Obviously then we cannot afford to leave out so important a contributory to picturesque effect, and it is on this account rather than on account of sharp or un-sharp detail that the question of stops and lens apertures comes in.

Look at the image of a landscape on a moderately hazy day, as it appears on the ground-glass focusing screen of your camera, using the lens at full aperture then quickly insert f/32, and notice the difference. Not alone have objects near at hand and more remote become more sharply or more equally defined, but you may also notice that objects are more brilliant, and that a sense of atmosphere has been cut out.

Compare if you will two photographs, the one made respectively with full aperture of f/6 or f/8 and the other made with f/32 or f/45, and provided that in the first case we have not actual blurring to the extent of destroying form and structure, does not the first remind you more of nature? I do not say it is so instructive, so surprising, so dainty, or of such exquisite finish, but is it not more reminiscent of the effects we remember to have seen and felt in nature. It is not the function of this article to say to what optical laws this difference is due, and yet the student may expect to receive something by way of practical working instructions.

My recommendation is then to use a single landscape lens or the single combination of a doublet, and in starting to use the full aperture.

With this it may be that when the foreground is moderately sharp, trees more remote are so ill denned as to appear as a collection of little blots and irregular patches. Whilst sharp detail in all places may not be productive of pictorial effect, yet the extreme opposite will be displeasing in another way, and it will be best to secure just so much definition and no more as shall save the representation from appearing to have been willfully put out of focus — once let the destruction of detail be obvious and we betray the artifice by which we are working, which is just what we should avoid.

In the case just supposed then, we may now introduce the first stop, simultaneously racking the lens in a little until we get middle distance without unpleasantly obvious blurring. The foreground may be a little out of focus, and in practice I find it is rather helpful to general effect if detail is sacrificed more in the foreground than in the middle distance.

This I believe is contrary to the teaching of many, but my feeling is that with a sharply defined foreground the eye is attracted and the interest so far arrested, that it is difficult to travel further and enter into the poetry and sentiment of the scene beyond.

Wide-angle lenses have a double disadvantage, shared in part by so-called rapid rectilinear doublet lenses. In the first place they flatten the view, bringing distant planes to appear as near as the nearer ones, and by including a comparatively wide angle they bring into the plane of the foreground, objects so near that they appear out of proportion, and hence proportions are false when judged as the observer must judge by the standard of visual perspective.

A long-focus, narrow-angle lens necessitates a camera which racks out to a considerable length, and probably a greater extension than any camera in the ordinary way can give, would be an advantage on some occasions.

Passing reference has been made to the interpretation of colors in nature in their true relative value of black and white.

If we have a subject in which brilliant orange-colored rushes in autumn are seen as glowing bright against a background of dark blue water, and the rushes made still more golden of hue by the ruddy rays of a sinking sun, a difficult case is before us.

Such a case I remember very well in the south of Devonshire, close to what is known as Slapton Ley. It was late afternoon in November, and from over the rounded hills behind me to the westward, the declining sun sent warm red rays on to the belt of faded reeds which stretched out into the expanse of the still land-locked water of the Ley — a great sheet of fresh water which placidly lay under the shelter of the bank of shingle which alone separated it from the ever-restless sea — placidly listening to the ceaseless voices of sea music, and at this particular hour reflecting the sky deep blue and of almost leaden hue — just above the bank rose the full moon, orange in tint, on a background of blue-green sky the yellow reeds, kindled into glowing amber tints by the sun’s rays, flamed out from the deep blue water yellow the shingle bank against the blue water and green-blue sky, deeper yellow the moon as it rose from out the sea. So grand a scheme of color that by its side the essays of the most daring painter might well seem feeble, so exquisite a poem that the intrusion of the photographer, analysing the values and tones and calculating his powers of reproduction seemed like sacrilege. In the main it was yellow, orangeyellow, and red standing out as luminous against the deep blue of water and only a little less blue sky. It was gorgeous non-actinic color appearing as light against a highly actinic but darker color. The consequence of an indiscreet exposure with an ordinary plate might be anticipated to produce dark rushes against a pale grey background of water, and so probably the very effect we were minded to secure, reversed and dissipated.

This is an extreme case, perhaps, but throughout the whole range of nature the contrasting and blending of adjacent colors is so subtle a thing that I should feel one were throwing away at least a possible advantage by not using color-corrected or isochromatic plates on nearly every occasion, and in order to get the full advantage of isochromatic plates, I should consider the addition of a yellow screen an essential.

The rapidity of one’s plates, isochromatic or otherwise, must be governed entirely by the nature of the subject, as also to some degree must be development and subsequent printing.

In every case I would endeavour to get a comparatively thin negative, with even the portions representing deepest shadows slightly veiled. “Clear glass shadows” is an enormity and an outrage both of science and art; equally are solid high-lights to be shunned. With modern printing methods it needs much less than actual opacity in the negative to produce white paper, and if the picture requires any part of it at all to appear as quite white, no subject will need more than the very smallest region to be so. A general softness and very subtle gradation, with a total absence of “sparkle” and brilliancy in the negative, will yield by at least most processes the most suggestive print, bearing in mind that delicate gradations suggest atmosphere, and atmosphere is one of nature’s most precious qualities.

Whilst plain salted papers sensitized with silver present possibilities not yet sufficiently exploited, yet until such time that something more entirely satisfactory in all respects is given us in silver papers, platinotype and carbon, and perhaps also gum bichromate will be the processes most suitable for our purpose. Personally, platinotype has been the favored medium, being, as I believe, more ductile and more amenable to various methods of control than is generally recognized.

And leaving much more of importance unsaid than space limits admit of my saying, I must leave it.