...to be able to say of a representation that it is "exactly like Nature " is by no means equivalent to saying that it is a fine picture. - Alfred Horsley Hinton

I have sometimes felt that writers on the artistic aspect of photography have too often, like the reformers of religious creeds, led their followers into a condition of disbelief and unrest, and then left them to find out for themselves how to live up to new and vague beliefs, so many writers on Pictorial Photography have told us what to avoid without saying why, and have then told us what to do without showing how.

As a general rule, therefore, the lights and shadows of clouds near the horizon are less vivid than in clouds higher up. Exceptions to this rough rule will be found when the source of light is near the horizon, as in sunset and sunrise, also when there is a gathering of local stormclouds which may hover over the distance as a dark pall, when there is fair weather and light, transparent clouds near to us.

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.