Arthur Hammond Quotes

...even if our range of tones is shorter and we have to compress the tones into a shorter scale, we can preserve truth of value only by keeping the tones in about the same relative proportions. We should make our lightest tone light and our darkest tone dark, and then get in as many tones as we can in between.

The emotions suggested by facts, not the facts themselves, are what concern the picture maker. This is where he is differentiated from those who seek to make only records and who are concerned only with facts.

Photography, properly controlled, can render tones better than any other medium of artistic expression, and personal control of exposure and development will be all that is necessary to get good tones and truthful gradations, for the camera, properly guided and then left to do its own job in its own way, will take care of the tones of a picture very well.

...the accuracy of the lens is often regarded as infallible, whereas, from the artistic standpoint, a lens is less accurate than the trained eye.

I do want to make it clear that the success of the picture does not depend entirely upon the beauty of the subject, but mainly upon the manner in which the picture-maker uses his pictorial material.

The would-be picture-maker must learn to think pictorially; he must try to regard a picture as a pattern, as an arrangement of lines and shapes, making in themselves a pleasing and satisfying design, quite apart from the objects represented. The lines will form certain shapes, and the shapes will vary in tone; some may be light, some dark and some of intermediate shades of gray, which we call halftones.

So photography, having a place among artistic processes, has its own distinguishing quality which cannot be duplicated by any other medium.

Too many lines and too many objects of equal importance in a picture will cause confusion, discomfort and eye-strain.

Lines have expression, and by the use of lines alone we can suggest impressions.

...the composition in portraiture and figure studies may be constructive rather than selective, though it will be found that selective composition also plays an important part in portraiture.

There should be no very violent contrasts and no spottiness of light and shade, and, above all, the tones must be right.

An ordinary photographic plate or film is abnormally sensitive to the light rays at the violet end of the spectrum and is strongly affected by the ultra-violet rays, which are invisible though they are present in sunlight, but it is practically insensitive to red and to the colors at the red end of the spectrum. Therefore, an ordinary plate sees red as black and is affected only very little by orange and yellow, so that those colors appear very dark while, on the other hand, being so sensitive to blue and violet, these colors are made to appear too light. That is why we can use a red light in the darkroom, as the plate is affected, practically, not at all by red light.

To learn to see pictorially is the first essential duty of the would-be picture-maker.

The areas of tones are called masses and, whatever the subject of picture may be, its success as a picture depends very largely on the effectiveness of the spacing and massing.

The main object of interest should not be in the exact centre of picture-space, because that is where we imagine the fulcrum of the steelyard balance to be.