Alfred Horsley Hinton Quotes

As a rule, in pictorial photography a long-focus lens will on the whole be most satisfactory.

We know the mountain peaks are lofty, and we think of them so, and we mentally enlarge them, but not the cottage at their foot, or the trees half way up.

With most of us, even without special training, there is a certain instinctive sense of proportion, and thus we recognize the relative distance of objects by their relative size.

...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.

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.

The louder a sound is, the more we recognize it as being near, so the louder the "tone" of objects that is, the blacker or whiter the nearer they seem; and so if in our picture we wish to give a sense of distance, we must see that the darkest shadows and highest lights are in the foreground : and because we may not be able to materially alter things as the undiscriminating process gives them to us, we must seek for and select those scenes, those subjects, in which this arrangement of highest and deepest tones do come in the foreground, and then take care that our process renders them with fidelity, so that we may not lose the sense of their nearness or the feeling of greater distance of other planes which it is intended they shall give.

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.

...he (a photographer) forgets that unless he has learnt when the tones of a picture are right or not, he will not know whether his work is good or bad, nor know what to try and overcome in future.

Photography itself may err by inaccurately rendering the relative tones in Nature. Then we shall have to ask, What is " Tone "?...

… to put it into slightly different form, it is not the facts in nature that the good picture aims at portraying, but the effects of light and shade accompanied by a pleasing arrangement.

The prettiest or most interesting prospect may lack the conditions which awaken our emotions, and, lacking the essentials of the picture, must be passed by.

If we are to select our subjects or arrange our groups with a pictorial motive we must absolutely and entirely sacrifice every other consideration, and be prepared to cut out of our composition the prettiest and most interesting item, if by so doing composition pure and simple is improved. And if some subject you are attached to will not admit of composition or will not admit of your treating it pictorially, then photograph it if you wish, but never suppose that it will form a picture.

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.

The desire to see for the sake of seeing is with most people the only desire to be gratified; hence the delight in detail.

The composition may be ever so carefully worked out, but it must appear unconsciously done. And so it will be best in most cases to depart slightly from precise and symmetrical arrangement, as though unintentionally, lest the endeavor to obey artificial rules betrays itself.