Identifier: americanannualof28newy (find matches)
Title: The American annual of photography
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors:
Subjects: Photography
Publisher: New York : Tennant and Ward
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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is just how some of thedifficult things of photography can be made easier. If you canmake good negatives, of just the kind you want every time,then are you free to concentrate your attention to composi-tion, to lighting, and to pictorialism. And until you can makegood negatives every time, I believe you are wasting your timetrying to make pictures. Its like a man that is color blindpainting tulips. Get away from this old and extremely dead idea of feelingin a negative process. Any sort of negative can be made thescientific way, and if you make one that you like, it is an easymatter to produce another one just like it. Its not a matterof feeling,—its a matter of light intensities on a piece ofbromide paper in a meter—coupled with a certain number ofseconds on the dial of a watch—coupled with a developer ofstandardised composition—with a thermometer of reasonableveridity in it—with a dark-room clock, and careful, sure,methodical work on the part of the operator. Then if he 58
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SUNLIGHT ON CHALLIS HOUSE, SYDNEY. HAROLD CAZNEAUX. likes a negative that is ten per cent over exposed, and ten percent under developed—if that gives the effect he is looking for,then he can produce negatives of that sort until his purse orthe supply of gelatine runs short. If every point in the pro-duction of a negative is carefully systematized according to theWatkins methods, and certain variations give the results de-sired for any reason, then it is always easy to produce the sameresults, and the day of occasional satisfactory negatives willbe at an end. The point of the whole thing—the gist of itall—the raison detre of the scientific method is this—theworker by guess, or feeling, or inspiration sometimes makesa good negative for his purpose and the worker by scientificmethods, sometimes makes a bad one for his. One last word I want to say—and I feel like Luther that 1must say it even if there were as many devils about as thereare tiles on the roof—if you want to make

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