Practical Hints

As practical hints for working cannot be woven into a continuous text, we will give them separately.

Prizes For "Set Subjects"

Never compete for prizes for "set subjects" for work of this kind leads to working from preconceived ideas, and therefore to conventionality, false sentiment, and vulgarity.

Man Originally Vulgar

Remember that the original state of the minds of uneducated men is vulgar, you now know why vulgar and commonplace works please the majority. Therefore, educate your mind, and fight the hydra-headed monster - vulgarity. Seize on any aspect of nature that pleases you and try and interpret it, and ignore - as nature ignores - all childish rules, such as that the lens should work only when the sun shines or when no wind blows.

Aeolus. Merit Of Photographs

AEolus is the breath of life of landscape. The chief merit of most photographs is their diagram-atic accuracy, as it is their chief vice.

Pseudo-Scientifio Photographers And Art

Avoid the counsels of pseudo-scientific photographers in art matters, as they have avoided the study of art.

Resolution. Point Of Sight

If you decide on taking a picture, let nothing stop you, even should you have to stand by your tripod for a day.

Do not climb a mast, or sit on the weathercock of a steeple, to photograph a landscape; remember no one will follow you up there to get your point of sight.

Rembrandt Pictures. "Artist Photographers"

Do not talk of Rembrandt pictures, there was but one Rembrandt. Light your pictures as best you can and call them your own.

Do not call yourself an "artist-photographer" and make "artist-painters" and "artist-sculptors" laugh; call yourself a photographer and wait for artists to call you brother.

Falsity Of Photographic Portraits

Remember why nearly all portrait photographs are so unlike the people they represent - because the portrait lens as often used gives false drawing of the planes and false tonality, and then, comes along the retoucher to put on the first part of the uniform, and he is followed by the vignetter and burnisher who complete the disguise.

Amount Of Landscape To Be Included In A Picture

The amount of a landscape to be included in a picture is far more difficult to determine than the amount of oxidizer or alkali to be used in the developer.

"Flat" And "Weak" Negatives

Pay no heed to the average photographer's remarks upon "flat" and "weak" negatives. Probably he is flat, weak, stale and unprofitable; your negative may be first-rate, and probably is if he does not approve of it.

Bad Woodcutters

Do not allow bad wood-cutters and second-rate process-mongers to produce libels of your work.

Broad and simple.

Be broad and simple.

Work and faith.

Work hard and have faith m nature's teachings.

The Propitious Moment

Remember there is one moment in the year when each particular landscape looks at its best, try and secure it at that moment.

Procrastination

Do not put off doing a coveted picture until another year, for next year the scene will look very different. You will never be able twice to get exactly the same thing.

Vulgarity

Vulgarity astonishes, produces a sensation; refinement attracts by delicacy and charm and must be sought out. Vulgarity obtrudes itself, refinement is unobtrusive and requires the introduction of education.

Art And Legerdemain

Art is not legerdemain; much "instantaneous work is but jugglery.

"Going In For Photography"

Though many painters and sculptors talk glibly of "going in for photography," you will find that very few of them can ever make a picture by photography; they lack the science, technical knowledge, and above all, the practice. Most people think they can play tennis, shoot, write novels, and photograph as well as any other person - until they try.

Faith

Be true to yourself and individuality will show itself in your work.

Sensational In Nature

Do not be caught by the sensational in nature, as a coarse red-faced sunset, a garrulous waterfall, or a fifteen thousand foot mountain.

Pretti-Ness

Avoid prettiness - the word looks much like pettiness, and there is but little difference between them.

On Studying Photography

No one should take up photography who is not content to work hard and study so that he can take pictures for his own eye only. The artist works to record the beauties of nature, the bagman works to please the public, or for filthy lucre, or for metal medals.

On "Form"

At the University of Cambridge, in our student days, it was considered "bad form" to give a testimonial to a tradesman for publication. This is still "bad form;" let the student, therefore, never let his name appear in the advertisement columns of photographic papers beneath a puff of some maker's plates or some printing papers. "Grood wine needs no bush."

Value Of A Picture

The value of a picture is not proportionate to the trouble and expense it costs to obtain it, but to the poetry that it contains.