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RETOUCHING.* BY G. L. HURD. Natural retouching may be said to be such corrective work as will be unobtrusive—supplementing only the shortcomings incidental to the process. Photography does not always render a face as we see it, and, in order to bring the picture to as close a representation of life as possible, more or less work is required to be done, and this needs no excuse. For instance, either from a slight under-exposure or heedless development, your image lacks that soft blending of lights and shadows seen in nature ; the lines are hard, and a general exaggeration of the defects of the face is the result. It may be said that the most direct and effective way to remedy this is to make another negative, but there are often reasons why you had better not; you may have secured such a fine pose, and withal so pleasing and unconscious an expression—which has eluded you in every plate but that—that it makes one weary to think of renewed attempts. Perhaps the proofs have been shown, and the sitter will have that and no other. Clearly, then, you must make the most of that negative ; you must coax the shadows down, soften hard outlines, and try to make the flesh presentable. It is hardly necessary to say that, when you have done your best, if you commend it to the sitter, it must be with some mental reservations regarding technical value. Still, re touching has helped you out, and made respectable what otherwise would have been wholly bad. Or supposing the exposure and development had left nothing to be desired, perhaps the skin of the subject has appeared upon the plate as an exaggeration of blemishes, or patches of colour have assumed the form of depression. Such work as will correct.this is surely called for. Or, again, your sitter has a face full of angularities, which no lighting under heaven, unless accompanied by an over-exposure that will make it flat, can quite keep down to natural limits. Then the pencil is your friend again. Many people sitting in a light stronger than that to which they are accustomed will scowl a little. The expression Can often be made wholly right by a little judicious softening of the lines in the lower part of the forehead. Perhaps the whites of the eyes in the photograph may appear darker than in nature by reason of a tinge of yellowness, often noticed in persons of bilious habit, or the same result may be had from a congested state of the minute blood vessels. Then it is very easy to bring back the relative whiteness by a few touches with the pencil. Other illustrations of what may be called natural retouching will readily suggest themselves to you. Artistic retouching embraces all this and a good deal more ; when elaborately done, the entire face, and even a part of the drapery, has been carefully worked over ; the modelling of the face has been conscientiously preserved, the lights and shadows blended, the skin brought to a soft, textury appearance ; a tendency to flatness, when present, has been corrected ; a high light strengthened here and thereto give a little more pronounced effect, and a general bringing of the face into tone and value has been accom plished. I need not say that a negative worked in this way can only be done by an artist. A tremendous majority of all the negatives made in these days receive treatment of the most heroic character, and when the artist in banged hair has concluded her labours, nothing remains of the origi nal negative but the outline. She proceeds in free * Extracted from a paper read at the American Photographic Convention. and easy defiance of all the laws that govern the pro duction of natural objects in light and shade. All the characteristics of the face go down before her ruthless pencil; wrinkles disappear, depressions are made to rise up, delicate tracings of muscles are obliterated; and when all is done, the eyes and mouth are the only features that remain intact, and they are so out of value with all that surrounds them that they appear like floating islands in a spherical sea of polished marble. I do not blame the retoucher ; she works up to what is required of her, and what she is praised for doing, but this is the photographic portraiture of to-day. The highest ambition of the negative worker is to finish to a smoothness that rivals porcelain ; no thought or care for the modelling, or all that subtle quality of rendering so vital to the likeness ; no feeling for portrait effects—only a frenzy for a smooth, mechanical surface, and a struggle for rotundity. It is useless to remark how worthless such photographs are in the eyes of all people of artistic feeling, or even to those who seek a likeness, or how degrading it is to photography. Well, what shall we do? The public have elected that a shining puff-ball is the ne plus ultra of photographic art, and the artistic world has decided that there is nothing so common and debased as portraits by photography. He who refuses to conform to the standard set up by the public will have to forego their orders. I know whereof I affirm, for I have tried it. Still, there is a cloud in the sky, which, if no bigger than a man’s hand now, is going to overcast the heavens by and bye. Already there are many people who are sick of this miserable representation, and the number might be greatly increased if men of the better class would drop their weak-kneed policy, and work for the best results instead of the most profits in the immediate present. Truth will prevail in photography as in all else. I do not wish to be understood as inveighing against retouching, for we all know it is a great help when properly employed. To the conscientious photographer, he who seeks to give present and permanent value to portrait work, the question of working the negative is a more serious and perplexing one. GREAT Yarmouth and Eastern Counties Photographic Society.—This Society, which was started in October of last year, now musters fifty members. The next meeting of the Newcastle-on-Tyne and Northern Counties Photographic Association will be held in the lecture hall of the Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle, on Friday, February 6th, at 7.30 p.m. Exhibition of 160 lantern slides by lime light. Richmond Photographic Society.—A lecture on “Wild Animals in Captivity,” illustrated by the optical lantern, is to be given by Major J. Fortun Nott, president of the Society, at the Lecture Hall, Hill Street, Richmond, on Mon day, February 16th, at eight o’clock in the evening. The proceeds are to be given to the Richmond Hospital. George Dawson, M.A., Ph.D.—With mingled regret and satisfaction we learn that this investigator—so well known in connection with photographic research—has been elected, on the Queen’s nomination, to the Brotherhood of Charterhouse. We regret the necessity that urged him to seek refuge in the hospital, and are pleased that a home has been provided him for the remain der of his days. The record of Mr. Dawson’s life-work is that of a journalist, editor, author, and lecturer on science. He attributes his present incapacity for gaing a living by work in the laboratory, or by the use of his pen, to age and serious injuries received in 1889 while stopping a run-away carriage horse.