Top 15 Arthur Hammond Quotes

It must be understood that in picture-making the methods used by one photographer may be entirely unsuited to another. This must be so, or there would be little or no individuality in pictures by different artists.

Just because a picture is unusually low in tone, it is not necessarily pictorial.

A photographer must have as sound a knowledge of picture-making as a painter, and he must have such control over his chosen medium that he can put personal expression and his own individuality into his pictures.

Platinum is undoubtedly the process for the pictorialist, for it will reproduce gradations and halftones more delicately and with a longer range than any other similar printing process, but it demands a good negative to do it justice.

The success of the picture depends entirely upon the exposure; very little can be done in development to correct errors in timing, and it is the shadows that must be considered in judging the exposure.

Plates and films possess great latitude, it is true, but too short an exposure always has a tendency to cause a loss of atmosphere.

...shading is of great importance, and good shadows can best be secured when the sun is low, and when one side of all objects is more strongly lighted than the other.

Nature is interesting at all times, but, as a general rule, very harsh and glaring sunlight, when the sun is high in the heavens, should be avoided, because at such times there is an often an utter lack of relief, roundness and modeling in the trees and other objects.

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

...picture-making is almost entirely a matter of good taste, and that is largely instinctive when the taste has been trained and cultivated.

The artist, and more especially he who uses a camera, must enedeavor to be, not a mere recorder of external facts, but one who forms a vivid mental impression and tries to make us realize his impression.

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

There is as much difference in the meaning of the words tone and tones as there is in the words nerve and nerves.

The function of composition is to make a picture interesting, and the disposition of the lines in the picture, the opposition of lines, and their placing in the picture-space will all help in giving the desired interest.

...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.