PhotoHistory

Here is an interesting advertisement for a photography correspondence course. Disguised as a one-page article, it is from a British photographic annual, published during World War One:

THE PURSE OF FORTUNATUS

By M Nesbit

From: Photograms of the Year 1915
F J Mortimer, editor

Every child and every grown-up is familiar with that most alluring of fairy stories, Prince Fortunatus and His Magic Purse. How it was never empty. How it was always handy at the right moment, and how, whenever the fortunate owner wanted to give alms, pay a bill, or buy anything he just fancied, there was the right amount that he wished for in the purse. Fancy having a purse like that in these hard times! Fancy being able to get those little things you want so badly but which have to be forgone because you haven’t the money and must economise. Fancy –but stop! Is it fancy? Has it ever occurred to you that you have a Purse of Fortunatus? You have a camera. You have negatives. You can make prints.

One’s desires, alas, nowadays, must all too frequently be subservient to one’s purse. In my own case many desires have been quelled by necessity, and it was not until I realised that my camera was indeed a Purse of Fortunatus that many possibilities were made probabilities, and probabilities were made certainties.

Once having had the right course pointed out to me, the road became clear and difficulties vanished. So soon as I was convinced that photographs were wanted by the papers and that the papers were prepared to pay for them, my camera and my stock of negatives took on a different aspect in my eyes. Two years ago my eyes were opened. How, I will tell you how later, but in the meantime I will relate just one of the ways by which I turned my plates and films into cheques and Treasury notes.

A preliminary overhaul of my negatives did not seem to disclose much that could be called strictly topical. Yet I soon discovered that there were many that could be made topical, and there were many records of happy holiday grounds of the past. Subjects that were concerned with the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, were also separated, and so on with a variety of other subjects that I had discovered could be turned to account when the right time arrived.

I then made prints. But here I must say at once that I realised that anyone who attempts to make money with his camera, in the way that I have, must go about the job in a businesslike manner. I do not mean by this that he must make a business of the work, to the neglect of his other vocations — far from it. But he must bear in mind that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well. I therefore decided that my prints should be as perfect as I could make them, and, moreover, they should be presented in the manner which I had discovered would make them appeal to the attention of the editors who would see them.

These prints, some of them small enlargements on glossy bromide paper, were all carefully trimmed and properly labelled with a full description, and my name and address. A deliberate onslaught on a plan prepared for me was then made on the illustrated press generally.

About half a dozen prints were chosen for each selected paper, and when all was ready they were sent the rounds. At first, before I fully realised the idea I had been told to work out, many came back, but some were accepted, and regularly for a month I sent a series every week.

I then took stock. Twelve packets each week at threepence per packet meant twelve shillings in the month. As the prints doubled their parts, those that were returned were repacked and sent in another direction. The total cost of printing material was therefore less than a pound.

In the first round five prints were accepted at half a guinea apiece My total outlay for the month, therefore, was well covered. During the other three weeks the average of acceptances increased, and at the end of the first month I was ten pounds in pocket. It was not until six weeks later that I was able to spare the time to make another batch of prints and repeat the process, with even better results. The pictures were altered to suit the seasons, and were added to from new negatives of subjects that I learnt were good sellers, and in some cases combination printing, such as the addition of clouds to otherwise plain skies over certain subjects, helped to sell the pictures to those papers that took non-topical stuff.

The ambition to make a definite sum for a certain purpose no less than one hundred and twenty guineas now became a fixed idea in my mind. In less than two years the sum was made and my object was achieved, but my eyes having been opened to the possibilities of my Fortunatus Purse, it is not likely that the lessons learnt and the experience gained will be thrown away. The path was too pleasant and the reward too tempting to abandon the journey.

You may ask how the idea to apply my amateur photographic knowledge to a definite and remunerative purpose first arose. The course of instruction given by the Practical Correspondence College of 15, Thanet House, Strand, W.C., was the key that unlocked the golden gate and enabled me to find such treasure-trove among my negatives.

When I think of the vast stores of negatives that must be in the cupboards of the amateurs of this country, I am convinced that it only needs a little instruction of the right kind to turn them into cash. To all amateur photographers, therefore, who read these lines, I can give this advice. Write to Mr. Vincent Lockwood of the P.C.C. at the above address, send him six of your prints, tell him your photographic experience, and ask for a criticism of the prints and particulars of the postal course of instruction. He will advise you in his reply as to your prospects, and I am convinced that if you possess a Purse of Fortunatus he will find it and help to open it for you.

Until you have proved for yourself the truth of what I have told you, you may not believe that editors really desire, and pay for, photographs from amateur photographers. But they do!

Every editor of a picture paper needs such photographs, and his appetite for them is insatiable. The editor of a picture paper, for instance, may be full up with short stories or articles, and often puts in little notes begging authors not to send in any more, but you never see paragraphs asking people not to send in any more photographs! No, he can’t get enough pictures of the kind he wishes to publish.

The purse exists right enough. Can it become yours? Some amateur photographers have discovered this purse, and keep mighty quiet about it, because they want to make it yield all the half-guineas they can. Literally hundreds of pounds are paid out every week in reproduction fees for photographs, there is no reason why there shouldn’t be twice as many freelance press photographers in the field.

People who do not see many illustrated papers and journals have no idea what a lot they could do in this direction, even in a period like the present. The camera may have been laid aside, but what does that matter? You have plenty of negatives stowed away in boxes, and dozens of subjects are probably sale-able if you only know which to print and send in.

Gaslight and bromide paper is cheap enough, and you can probably make enough gaslight prints during the next few months to earn more money from photography than you have ever spent on your hobby. Isn’t it worth while to prove your own ability by submitting six prints for a free criticism? The Purse of Fortunatus is so valuable in these days of high prices and heavy taxation.