An idea is just as big as a man makes it. Home portraiture is as old as photography, but until recently few photographers have used it as more than a means of photographing people who for some reason would not come to the studio.

Possibly it was someone without a studio who conceived the idea of making a business of home portraiture and saving the rent of a place of business. At any rate, photographers here and there who were not tied down by studio traditions made home portraiture a part of their work and encouraged such sittings. It has worked to the advantage of the studio photographer and has proved to his satisfaction that it does reach people who would not come to the studio to be photographed.

The Moffett Studio of Chicago was one of the first of many studios to develop home portraiture on a large scale. Chicago people from the start took kindly to the idea and were willing to be shown that good portraits could be made in their homes as satisfactorily as in a studio. It was but a short time until there was a big demand for Moffett home portraits.

The field seemed to be unlimited. There was a limit, however, to the men who were capable of doing such work. Most of them had to be trained before they were able to bring their work up to the Moffett standards. It's one thing to make a home portrait business stand on its own feet under its own name, but it's quite another thing for a studio with a reputation for a high standard of work to maintain that standard for work done outside the studio.

The Moffett Studio has demonstrated that successful home portraiture depends upon the ability of the photographer to select the most favorable conditions of light, background and accessories found in the home, to know perfectly the possibilities of the material with which he is working and to exhaust his picture possibilities before he counts his work finished.

The last may necessitate the making of a number of negatives, but it almost always results in large orders and obviates making sittings over, which are much more expensive than in studio work.

No expense is spared. Operators are selected for their special ability and are given a thorough trial before they are allowed to make sittings in the home. At the beginning, the greatest drawback to the work was the necessity of using glass plates. When it was learned that Portrait Film was soon to be placed on the market, the big film advantages of convenience were at once seen and appreciated. Film was ordered, tried out, proved satisfactory, and was adopted for home portraiture. Convenience seemed the big film advantage, but when it had been thoroughly tried out its quality was so apparent that it was also adopted for studio work.

Artura Print, From An Eastman Portrait Film Negative By Moffett Studio Chicago, Ill.

Artura Print, From An Eastman Portrait Film Negative By Moffett Studio Chicago, Ill.

Aside from home portraiture the business of the Moffett Studio is large and of a very high class. Its success is due to its very able management, and the high standards this management insists on upholding, in its service, salesmanship and the quality of the work produced.

Our illustrations are from the regular run of work produced by this studio and show the adaptability of film for all classes of portrait work.

The amount of light used in the studio has a wonderful effect on the eyes of a sitter. A person with small eyes should never be placed in a brilliant light, for the simple reason that the eyes will contract and appear to be much smaller than they actually are. Full justice cannot be done to the eyes if the sitter is all the time straining to protect them from the glare. That is why the eyes are seldom a pleasing feature in photographs taken out-of-doors.