Volltext Seite (XML)
Should the nitrate bath be old, the acetic acid must be in creased until the developer flows smoothly. With a fresh nitrate bath make no change, as it is all one could wish. GELATINE, SYRUP, and Copper Solution. Water 8 ounces Gelatine 16 grains Golden syrup 1 ounce. Dissolve by heat, then add 1 ounce of acetic acid ; saturate the whole with oxide of copper, made by precipitating a solution of nitrate of copper with a solution of caustic potash, washing and drying the precipitate.” A SIMPLE METHOD OF DOUBLE PRINTING. BY WALT EE WOODBURY. Since attention has been called to the fact that very fine composition pictures may be obtained on card negatives, by the beautiful pictures lately produced by Mr. Edge, of Preston, allow me to lay before your readers a plan which I adopted some years ago, in Java, for producing the same result, by which very good effects may be obtained. The negative of the figure, with the leaves, stones, or whatever may be used to form the foreground, should have the background carefully filled in with an opaque black; and from the negative in this state a transparency must be printed on a thin film of mica, by any known dry process, which may be done by damping the mica and placing it on a sheet of glass and preparing it as in the ordinary way, but giving such an exposure and development as will give a very strong black image, which may be gone over without much care, with an opaque material. The negative is then printed, giving, of course, a perfectly white ground. The talc mask may then be carefully placed so as to cover exactly the part already exposed, and the background negative then printed in ; if this is carefully done it is im possible to detect any joint in the composition. The back ground should be lightly printed from a weak negative, but full of half-tone, and , may in some cases be improved by allowing the light to fall bn it after removal of the negative. VISITS TO NOTEWORTHY STUDIOS. W E have often endeavoured to impress upon our readers our conviction that success in photography depended rather upon the man than the method of working ; upon the amount of knowledge and culture possessed by the photo grapher, rather than upon the process he selected or the material appliances he employed. Nevetheless, it may be safely affirmed, as a pendant to the first proposition, that the method selected “ oft proclaims the man being, as it is, the result of his knowledge and culture. An acquaint ance with the methods employed by eminent photographers is, then, of the utmost value, not simply as instruction, but as instruction commended by the prestige of success, and as example possessing the stamp of authority. We propose, therefore, to bring before our readers a series of papers on the mode of working employed by men who have distinguished themselves in various branches of our art-science, either by their artistic, scientific, mechanical, or commercial success. We shall describe their studios, their processes, and their operations ; their modes of working, the places in which they work, and the results they produce. We have already accumulated much material for these sketches, and shall avail ourselves of every opportunity of visiting noteworthy studios in which we may find matter of instruction or interest for our readers. And as we have the good fortune to possess the acquaintance or friendship of the majority of the most able and the most successful photo graphers, a class we have ever found least reticent and most ready to communicate the results of their experience for the benefit of their brethren or the advancement of the art, our readers may rely on obtaining in this series of papers a faithful epitome of the practice of those who, by excellence, have acquired distinction and success, and an indication of at least the material elements which have conduced to that success. Turning in a direction in which public interest has travelled much during the last few months, we shall commence with The Studio of M. Adam-Salomon. M. Salomon’s studio is pleasantly situated at Passy, a suburb of Paris, in the neighbourhood of the Bois de Bou logne. After an agreeable drive through the Champs Elysecs, passing under the Arc de Triomphe, and trending to the left, we reach the Rue de la Faisanderie, and enter the pretty Maison de Campagne, or villa residence, where M. Salomon resides and produces those wonderful portraits which for many months past have excited so much admiration, so much envy, and so much discussion amongst photographers, and have won such high encomiums for the art and the artist amongst people of culture outside of photography. On entering, we find no pretentious display of specimens in various styles and sizes, but, in a very pleasant little salon distinguished by elegance and taste in every appointment, a dozen or two examples of the one size and style of por traits to which M. Salomon devotes himself. These are not spread about or hung up, but are quietly piled in two or three heaps on a side table. The size of the portraits is 1 Of inches by 84 inches. Each portrait is placed under glass, and bound round the edge with a narrow slip of white paper; but none are upon mounts having any margin whatever. There are no coloured photographs exhibited, and very few persons, we apprehend, would dream of apply ing colour to the admirable examples of photography before us, which seem, indeed, the very perfection of monochrome portraiture. Passing out into the garden, and neglecting for the present the sculptural atelier, we find the most recently erected photographic studio, which was used in summer, but is now abandoned for the old studio in which the majority of the pictures at the Exhibition were produced. The summer studio, as we may designate it for distinction, has been not inaptly described as simply a shed, with a glazed lean-to roof, facing south. But it is to be noted that there is not an inch of clear white glass in any portion of the studio. Immediately over the head of the sitter is a row of panes of dark blue glass, and all the rest of the glass is stippled with white paint to produce the effect of ground glass. As, at the time of our first visit, his studio was not erected, and at the time of our last visit abandoned, we can not give any detailed account of the management of light in it. From the even flood of subdued light which entered the room when we saw it, we should have imagined it diffi cult to secure vigorous contrasts of light and shade and the fine relief and modelling which characterize M. Salomon’s pictures generally; but as one of the finest examples of his portraiture which we have seen—we refer to the portrait of Dr. Diamond, which we exhibited in Conduit Street—was produced in this studio, we conclude that the artist finds means to govern the light to produce the result he requires. We may remark, before mounting into the other studio, that in the garden is a canopy, underneath which is a back ground placed ; and, we learn on inquiry, that on occasions when extremely short exposure is required, or when, from the lateness of the hour and the badness of the light, opera ting in the glass-room is impossible, and the production of a portrait is very important, M. Salomon operates in the open air. One of the results which we saw, taken very late in the afternoon of an October day—the sitter being a gen tleman who left for India the same evening—was in many respects a very fine portrait. We now mount to the studio in which M. Salomon usually operates. It is a rectangular room about 26 feet long by 16 feet wide, with a ridge roof about 13 feet high at the ridge, and from 7} to 8 feet high at the eaves. Both