How to take clouds. To print in clouds.

The best way, then, if a cloud negative is wanted, is to take it at the same time as the landscape and from the same point of view, getting as much as possible the same impression as seen in nature. The exposure must of course be by a shutter set quickly. We think the best way of printing in clouds so obtained, is to take a piece of damp tissue paper the size of the negative, gum it round the edges to the back of the negative, then with some blacklead and a stump blacken the sky out when the paper is dry, carefully following the contours of those objects which stand in relief against the sky with a lead pencil. In this way you can with marvellous accuracy stop out the sky, and the work being on the back of the negative and in plumbago, the contours still show the mingled decision and indecision of nature. The print is then taken, and afterwards the cloud negative is arranged as desired, the sky-line being covered with cotton-wool and the rest of the exposed landscape by a black cloth. No special printing frames are required for this purpose, only one a size or two larger than the negative you are printing from. Cloud printing, as we have said, is the simplest form of combination printing, and the only one admissible when we are considering artistic work. Rejlander, however, in the early days of photography, tried to make pictures by combination printing. This process is really what many of us practised in the nursery; that is cutting out figures and pasting them into white spaces left for that purpose in a picture-book. With all the care in the world, the very best artist living could not do this satisfactorily. Nature is so subtle that it is impossible to do this sort of patchwork and represent her. Even if the greater truths be registered, the lesser truths, still important, cannot be obtained, and the softness of outline is entirely lost. The relation of the figure to the landscape can never be truly represented in this manner, for all subtle modelling of the contours of the figure are lost. Such things are easy enough to do, and when we first began photography we did a few, but soon gave it up, convinced of its futility. Rej lander, though he tried it, soon saw the folly of such play, and he is the only artist we know of who used it. Mrs. Cameron and Adam Salomon never indulged in such things that we know of. Some writers have honoured this method of printing by calling it the highest form of photographic work. Heaven help them! The subject is hardly worth as many words, for though such "work" may produce sensational effects in photographic galleries, it is but the art of the opera bouffe.

Combination Printing. Rejlan-Der

Masks

In printing, variously shaped masks are used. There is no objection to them, but in our opinion they do not in any way improve the subject, although they do not necessarily spoil it like vignetting.

Besides all these "dodges," there are machines for producing imitation enamel portraits in basso-relievo and cavi-relievo, but all such ideas are false in theory, and the results inartistic hybrids unworthy of any serious consideration.

Final

Here, then, we come to an end of the subject of printing, and in our opinion the student should consider himself fortunate indeed in having so beautiful a method as the platinotype process with which to work.