Alfred Horsley Hinton Quotes

Hence SELECTION in photography, or at least in landscape and some other branches of work, often takes the place of what in painting becomes voluntary COMPOSITION.

Probably every photographer has at times found it convenient to print one part of a negative more than another or lias covered another portion during printing, thus deliberately making those portions lighter or darker, as the case may be.

It should be a point for careful consideration, then, that with due consideration for perspective, lighting, etc., those clouds should be chosen for a landscape which, together with the landscape, will make a well-composed, well-balanced, and symmetrical whole.

It must be remembered that after all in making a picture we are endeavoring to set down on one plane various objects in such a way as to suggest an infinitude of varying planes, and hence we are justified in selecting such conditions of nature as shall help us to give the impression of truthfulness, even though it be not in particular cases absolutely true to fact.

It is often difficult and well-nigh impossible, when using the lens, to get all planes in moderate focus without getting one or some part excessively so, and similarly, if we avoid excessive sharpness in each and every part, some planes, such as the extreme distance or immediate foreground, so broken up as to destroy form and structure. Then it is that the pin-hole, with its equal focus in all planes and at any focal length, seems to recommend itself; but if it be desired to emphasize any object, by introducing more detail there than elsewhere, then the uniform sharpness of the pin-hole image fails us.

It must not be supposed that it is always necessary to present our landscapes with an attractive and well-defined arrangement of clouds; on the contrary, it will often happen that the effect of a scene is best emphasized by a mere grey tint representing a covered sky or even a blue, cloudless sky; but this is a very different thing to rendering it as a white blank.

...the purpose of a picture is not veracity to fact so much as truthfulness to idea; that is to say, it is not a question of what eye sees nor even what the brain imagines, but it is a question of what kind of production best awakens in the mind of the beholder the ideas which the maker of the picture desires him to receive.

Size, the mere number of square inches, of a picture, counts for nothing. A small picture may be quite as satisfying as a large; for remember that, as compared with the size of the mountain itself, the difference between a picture of it, thirty inches long, and one of six inches, is less than trifling.

But the quality of the result obtained by using a pin-hole to which its advocates attach most importance is the suppression of sharp focus over the whole image, no one plane being more sharply focused than another.

… generally speaking, a thin negative, one with a minimum of contrast and density, yet with just sufficient to give the amount of contrast required in the print, should be aimed at; but it must possess very soft gradation throughout.

In selecting our subject…there are two factors which it should be borne in mind are essential, and these are Expression and Composition

...strictly speaking, tone is the relative lightness and darkness due to the effect of light governed by atmosphere, and has nothing to do with the relative lightness and darkness or relative value with which various colours appear when compared with each other.

Probably every portrait photographer resorts to some such "dodge" for making a face lighter or other similar purpose, and he finds that the application of water-color paint in ever so thin a wash makes so much difference to the printing density that blue is commonly used as being a quick printing color, the effect of which is therefore not so great; an equally dense layer of blue and of red to any portion of a negative would print very differently, the red shutting off the light action much more powerfully than the blue.

Very great care should then be taken to see that distant objects are rendered so as to appear distant that is, in correct relative tone when compared with the foreground or nearer portions.

In rave cases, if the sun be behind the observer, the distant land may catch a powerful ray of sunlight, whilst the clouds overhanging it may remain in shadow, and hence light buildings, yellow cornfields, etc., may appear lighter than the distant clouds, but they at the same time gain in an appearance of nearness.