The photographic news

• Bandzählung: 35.1891
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1891
• 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-id1780948042-189100009
• PURL: http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id1780948042-18910000
• OAI: oai:de:slub-dresden:db:id-1780948042-18910000
• Sammlungen: LDP: Historische Bestände der Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig
• Sammlungen: Fotografie
• Strukturtyp: Band

• Digitalisat: SLUB Dresden
• Strukturtyp: Ausgabe

May 15, 1891.] THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS. 365 yellow, violet, and greenish blue respectively overlap, all three at the centre, and in twos for a space along each side. Here, where the blue-green and yellow overlap, we have full green, the yellow and violet transmit red, and the violet and blue-green give blue. In the centre, where all three overlap, is darkness. The explanation is that the violet and yellow films are both transparent to red, the violet and blue-green to the blue, and the blue-green and yellow to the full green. Where all three overlap, as the third film obstructs the particular light passing through the other two, we have darkness. A mixture of pigments is somewhat similar. Here each pigment absorbs some of the rays that would be allowed to pass by another pigment, and the result to the eye is what is left after the absorption by the constituent pigments. With transparent pigments, therefore, of complementary colours we obtain black. A very good water-colour black may be obtained by mixing lake, gamboge, and transparent blue. The different effect of colours seen, as blended by their separate effects on the eye, and blended by being mixed, may be illustrated by making a small stipple of blue and yellow, compared with a wash of a mixture of the same colours. In the latter case the effect is green; inthe former, when looked at at such a distance that the separate dots are no longer noticed, the effect is that of a low white or grey. The three colour sensations existing in most eyes are not, in all cases, complete. There are some persons who appear to be deficient either of a green or red. sensation, and who are, therefore, to a great extent, colour-blind. The sort of vision of colours experienced by the green colour-blind can be approximately understood by holding this sheet of coloured stripes—coloured red, yellow, green, blue, and violet—in the light shown by two lanterns’, one of which is furnished with a blue or violet-blue disc, and the other with a red disc. Here the green strip appears almost black, and the other colours somewhat different from what they appear in a white light. The position of the person who is red colour-blind may be estimated by holding the colour strips in a light com pounded of green and blue. Here the red is black ; the general effect rather inclined to monotony. It has been stated that as many as four per cent, of males are colour blind. The proportion of females is considerably less. Royal Institution.—Dr. A. C. Mackenzie, principal of the Royal Academy of Music, will on Thursday next (May 21st) begin a course of four lectures on “ The Orchestra considered in connection with the Development of the Overture ” ; and Professor A. H. Church, Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Academy of Arts, will on Saturday (May 30th) begin a course of three lectures on “The Scientific Study of Decorative Colour.” Photographs in Colour.—The newspaper reports which a few months back gave such sanguine accounts of M. Lippmann’s experiments, and which told an expectant world, for about the hundredth time, that the art of taking photographs in natural colours had been accomplished, laboured under a mistake ; but the error has been the means of calling attention to the undoubted fact that certain photo mechanical processes can produce pictures in colour which it is extremely difficult to distinguish from the original water-colour drawings from which they are copied. Oil pictures can be reproduced with nearly the same success, and it is not too much to suppose that these new methods will supplant the chromo-lithograph and the oleograph. Those who are interested in knowing what can be done in this direction should pay a visit to the parent society’s rooms at 50, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, where numerous specimens of photographs in colour are now on view, including examples of the process to which we called attention in our last issue. ART IN RELATION TO PHOTOGRAPHY. As we stated last week, Mr. Valentine Blanchard’s promised course of lectures on the above subject commenced on Wednesday. Mr. Blanchard began a most interesting discourse by apologising for the necessarily elementary nature of much which he would have to say. Commencing with straight lines, and building them up into squares, cubes, circles, &c., he showed how more perfect forms were arrived at in the pyramid and the parallelogram, and how such forms benefited by being seen in perspective, and still more improved by the breaking of these straight lines, and the rubbing down of corners, as illustrated in stone work exposed to the action of the weather. He pointed out that the various methods adopted by painters during the past four hundred years had developed certain art canons. Some of these may have grown rusty and lose their force, while new notions will often make a stir for a time, and threaten to displace the older rules. Painters work under such different conditions to photo graphers in having the power of selection and arrangement of the objects represented, that it might be argued that the latter, handicapped as they are by the limitations of the camera, can have no use for art canons. But the photo grapher cannot but benefit by studying the rules which guide the painter in his work, and must gain by such studies in educating his eye and powers of observation. But there must be capacity to see. It is a power which a man cannot purchase with his apparatus, and this is the reason why hundreds of amateur workers employ the camera who never produce artistic results. Mr. Blanchard then pointed out, by numerous archi tectural examples, shown by the lantern, how primitive man developed, from mere wooden structures, stone build ings, in which the features of the wooden erection—the beams, supporting piers, and joints—were idealised. From such materials the Doric order was evolved, and this in turn gave place to more ornate forms, of which the Corinthian Capital—the origin of which tradition ascribed to an accident—was a good example. From these beginnings gradually grew the Greek temple, and later the architectural monuments which still remain to us. The Gothic nave was probably suggested by tree trunks with their branches intertwining overhead—so art comes from nature; and nature never being formal, pictorial art should avoid all appearance of formality. Mr. Blanchard then proved, by numerous examples, how the occupation of the centre of a picture by the prin cipal object resulted in weakness of composition, and con trasted a photograph of a church in which the fault was glaringly apparent, with one of the same building taken from another point. lie closed his lecture by giving various examples of the pyramidal, wedge form of compo sition, and angular perspective, taking care to point out how balance can be secured by the introduction of objects in the right place. He advised his hearers to visit the National Gallery in order that they might study the originals from which many of his examples had been copied, and many other pictures to which he directed their attention. He also paid a tribute to the works of certain photographers who, inthe old days, had produced pictures which, with all the modern conveniences of dry plates, it would be very hard to beat. Mr. H. P. Robinson’s “Fading Away” was one of these. Mr. Blanchard very happily lightened his remarks by many a little reminiscence of those with whom he had been associated.