The photographic news

• Bandzählung: 29.1885
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1885
• Sprache: Englisch
• Signatur: F 135
• Vorlage: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Digitalisat: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Digitalisat: SLUB Dresden
• Rechtehinweis: Public Domain Mark 1.0
• URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-db-id1780948042-188500006
• PURL: http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id1780948042-18850000
• OAI: oai:de:slub-dresden:db:id-1780948042-18850000
• Sammlungen: LDP: Historische Bestände der Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Sammlungen: Fotografie
• Bemerkung: Seite I-II fehlen in der Vorlage. Paginierfehler: Seite 160 als Seite 144 gezählt.
• Strukturtyp: Band

• Digitalisat: SLUB Dresden
• Strukturtyp: Ausgabe

camera is the most useful. Of course there are some skies that remain more or less the same for long enough time to sketch them, and to put down a memorandum of the colours. With those, never have recourse to the camera. But there are others. You try to knock them in in char coal, but they are gone before you have enough down to be of any good. Here the camera comes in. You can put down a few memoranda of colours on a piece of canvas or paper besides, if you require it. “ Then there is moving water, waves, and ripples. You will sketch that better, as a rule, from an instantaneous photograph, than you will from the water itself, which is always changing. The same often, with a little bit of foreground, weeds at the water’s edge, and s> forth. All that, I think, is well enough, but a fellow who wants to paint, we will say, a cottage with a bit of road and a tree, and who takes a photograph of that, then goes home, and copies the photograph to make his whole picture, 1 con sider prostitutes art. Not but what the thing is done by men who call themselves artists, and who are successful, too. They make their ‘ pot boilers ’ that way. “ Then about figures. I know men who’ll take a photo- graph of a figure, and copy it precisely, line for line. They have, perhaps, no knowledge of anatomy, and they manage to put the figure in such a position and with such incon gruous surroundings that it is easy to tell the thing is from a photograph. If you want figures, I say paint them from the life ; or if you use a photograph, use it not to copy, but only to help you in points of detail. " With cattle and horses it’s different. You can’t pose your ox, for example, nor can you even make him stand still for long enough to draw him correctly, and I think that if the ox is only an adjunct to the picture, not the chief thing in it, it's right enough to make a photo graph of him, and to draw from that. “ There’s another thing I use photography for, and find it very useful in. You see that picture, there? Well, this very morning I have commenced etching from it. The first thing I did was to make a photograph of it. I can get a far better idea of how to work on the copper when I have the picture in monochrome as well as in colour. Not that I work from the photograph alone ; that won’t do, because the red and yellow come out too dark, and the blue too light, in it; but by having the photograph along side of the painting, I find that I get on much more easily than without it.” Our friend seemed to be quite innocent of any knowledge of isochromatic plates till we mentioned them to him. He continued : — “Then, again, you know, an artist is often dissatisfied with his work. He feels there is something wrong with his picture—a want somewhere. This is particularly the case when he is finishing up a landscape at home. He wishes the advice of a brother artist. Well, you know, I can’t expect to get afellowto come up here at a minute’s notice to advise me about my picture, even if I can find one. What I do now, since I have got my camera, is this. I take a photograph of my picture half finished as it is, and I put a print in my pocket, and when I am at the club of an evening I show it to a friend or two. Perhaps one of them says, ‘Look here, you want a figure just at that place.’ I wonder when it is pointed out to me. how I did not see that long ago. It’s strange how much easier it sometimes is to see the want in a picture at a first glance, than when you’ve been looking at it day after day. ” “ Yes, my camera is a small one, and what’s more, I don’t intend to have a larger. I find that quarter plate is large enough for what I want; I know what would happen if I had a much larger one, because I know how fascinating your art is. If I could bring home negatives of a good size, and get good prints from them, I could not resist the temptation to keep working with the camera and wasting time ; not that I wish to say anything disrespectful about photography, mind, but I’m not a photographer, I’m a painter ; and I consider that if I kept Using the camera instead of attending to my canvas, I should be wasting time. By all means let the painter use photography to assist him, but don’t let him slavishly copy photographs taken either by himself or by any one else. If they are taken by another man it’s downright dishonesty for a painter to copy them and call the resulting pictures his own. I think that if they were taken by himself—to be copied slavishly—he would be far better to stick to photo graphy, and call himself a photographer.” We asked our friend why it was that so many painters who made use of photography were ashamed to admit the fact. He could not tell. For his part, he was never ashamed to admit that he was a photographer in a small way, and to recommend his brother artists to follow his example in the matter. Possibly those who are ashamed to admit that they use the camera make use of it more extensively than they ought to. ebkew. SpOoN’s Mechanics’ Own Book.—Large octavo, 702 pages, 1,420 illustrations in the text, price 63.. (London and New York, E. and F. N. Spoil.') Whether to look on this book as more especially adapted for the emigrant who must make good use of his wits and his hands in a new country, or to speak of it as being just the thing for an artizan who may wish to learn something of such branches of industry as are akin to his own, we are at a loss ; but on second thought, it seems to have been written as a hand-book for the amateur mechanic, who is too often flippantly snubbed as a " jack of all trades,” unless it was compiled and edited with the express object of being used for presentation or loan to that troublesome individual, the intelligent school-boy home for the holi days. Mechanical drawing is treated of in thirteen pages, tracing, colouring, copying by various photographic methods (including contact printing from drawings by the gelatino-bromide method) being comprised ; but nearly three times this space is allotted to casting and founding, while “ forging and finishing” take up no less than forty- six pages. A very comprehensive chapter on the various methods of soldering precedes a shorter one on sheet metal work ing, after which comes a treatise on carpentering, occupy ing no less than 224 pages. Woods and tools are first treated of, after which constructive carpentry, or the principles of framing, is ably dealt with ; and those of our readers who contemplate bui’ding glass houses cannot do better than profit by the information here given them, especially as subsequent chapters treat of such subjects as the various methods of glazing, and details as to paint ing and upholstering: gas-fitting, paper-hanging, warming, ventilating, masonry, bricklaying, plastering, roofing, and cabinet making. (Iver four hundred sketches of the more usual mechani cal movements, with a few lines of letter-press devoted t > each, very appropriately precede the chapter on lathe and lathe-tools. Besides the matters already referred to, it will be sufficient if we mention the chapter on road-making— in which the reader is rapidly transported from the back woods of America to the Tunjab, and thence to Canada, London, New York, Vienna, and once more to India—the short but clear directions for well-digging and water getting in various localities, and the chapter on building houser, from log-huts upwards. A very notable feitre of the book is the profuseness with which it is illustrated, and another useful feature is that in general the approximate cost of toolsand materials is given.