Photographic Amusements Part 11

The bookplate is an intensely personal possession. The first were heraldic, identifying the possessors by their coats of arms. Modern bookplates usually reflect some personal taste of the owner, his hobby, his house, his portrait, or the type of books he collects.

Nothing could be more fitting than one made from a photograph taken by its possessor, and yet in the writer's collection of many thousand bookplates covering several centuries and many countries, there are less than a dozen photographic examples.

They are easily made. The most usual method is to choose a suitable photograph, a view of the home or library interior, a loved landscape or view, a symbolical figure with a book, a genre which may be a pun on the owner's name, or a picture relating to his chief hobby, and draw a more or less ornamental frame containing the words "Ex Libris"

or "His Book," together with the name, about it. There are other wordings, but the above are the commonest. The whole is then photographed down to the proper size, usually three or four inches high, and prints made either by photography or from a halftone block.

The nude female figure is a frequent motive in bookplates, whether photographic, or etched or engraved. The example we show is the work of two artists, one of whom made the photograph while the other designed the framework.

[Ill.u.s.tration: By A. E. Goetting and Will Ransom. FIG. 110.--A PHOTOGRAPHIC BOOKPLATE.]

LANDSCAPES AND GROUPS ON THE DINING-ROOM TABLE

Did you ever try building landscapes on the dining-room table? If not, learn how easy it is and try it out some evening or rainy Sunday, when you don't feel like tramping across country with muddy roads and flat lightings.

The easiest kind of pictures to make in this way is an imitation of snow scenes. Any white material may be used, as snow, i.e., fine salt, powdered sugar, flour, or whatever the kitchen closet or the chemical shelf may produce. A range of mountains may easily be made by merely heaping up the material and then modeling ravines and broken slopes with a sharp pencil. A brilliant side lighting should be used to give the effect of sunrise or sunset, and clouds may be printed in from a cloud negative or obtained by means of a roughly painted background.

Perhaps mountains are more naturally represented by the use of a few sharp-angled pieces of coal from the cellar, or fragments of broken stone from the nearest quarry or monument maker. On these, after arranging, the white powder may be sifted, lodging in a close imitation of nature. If a highly polished table is used, reflections may be obtained as in a lake, or a sheet of gla.s.s with a dark cloth under it may be used for the same purpose.

More complicated landscapes may be made by using twigs as leafless trees, fence posts, etc., and children's toy houses may be introduced, particularly if well screened by brush and half buried in snow. Only the merest hint of the possibilities can be given, for they are endless.

The introduction of figures, in the shape of dolls, china and metal animals, carts, autos, railroad trains, etc., greatly widens the scope of such landscape work, but of recent years these figures have been more frequently used for tableaux, such as the one shown opposite.

Extremely comical pictures have been made with kewpies, billikens and other queer creatures and their animal friends, and with grotesque figures made of vegetables, fruit and eggs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: By Clark H. Rutter. FIG. 111.--FRIEND OR FOE.]

NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY.

The night photographer has to be more or less immune to criticism, and willing to endure all kinds of conversational interruptions, from friendly questions to unmannerly jeers and imputations of insanity.

The general public knows from personal experience with hand cameras provided with slow lenses and small stops that picture taking can be done only by sunlight and in the middle of the day, and does not understand the setting up of a camera in a poorly-lighted place at night for the taking of a picture. Nevertheless, this branch of photography is very interesting and results are possible even in villages and the open fields, wherever the least artificial illumination or glimpse of moonlight is present.

Naturally, much light means shorter exposures than are possible with very sparing illumination, but too many light sources do not tend to artistic results. One of the finest night pictures we ever saw was that of an old farmhouse, nearly buried in snow, with one or two windows showing the light of a kerosene lamp. The snow was illuminated by the light of the full moon, and only two or three minutes' exposure was given.

As a matter of fact, 15 to 30 minutes' exposure on any landscape at _f_: 8 by the light of the full moon high in the sky will give a picture hardly to be distinguished from one made in daylight except by the softness of the shadows, and such pictures sometimes have a softness and wealth of detail in ordinarily shadowed parts which cannot be obtained by exposures in daylight.

The best night pictures are perhaps those taken in city streets brilliantly illuminated by arc lights, especially when the pavements are wet. Care must be taken not to have brilliant lights s.h.i.+ning directly into the lens, for even double-coated plates will not prevent halation and reversal of the image under such circ.u.mstances. Ghosts, or wheel-shaped images of the lights, in other parts of the plate, are sure to occur with all double lenses in such cases. The night picture shown opposite shows how interesting a simple subject, poorly illuminated, may turn out in the print. This shows typical star radiation about the single visible light, caused by the blades of the iris diaphragm, and also a slight ghost from this light on the face of the tower, caused by a double reflection within the lens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: By F. A. Northrup. FIG. 112.--A GLIMPSE OF THE EXPOSITION.]

Other forms of night photographs, treated elsewhere in this book, are photographs of fireworks and lightning. Very interesting and scientifically valuable pictures of the latter phenomenon have been made by swinging the camera during the exposure, thus getting a dozen or more paths of the same flash parallel to each other.

PHOTOGRAPHS ON APPLES AND EGGS.

To make a photograph in green on the red skin of an apple is a wonderful but simple feat. Tie up the selected fruit on a sunny bough in a thick yellow or black paper bag for about three weeks before harvest time. Immediately after taking off the bag, paste a black paper stencil or a very contrasty negative to the apple with white of egg. It should be small, to fit the curved surface quite closely.

Clear away leaves, so the sun gets clear access to the fruit, and leave on the tree till it becomes red. If not then ripe, put it back into the opaque bag for a day or two till ready to pick. The negative may then be soaked off. Don't use a valuable negative, but make a duplicate for this experiment. A paper stencil is better, anyway.

To put a photograph on an egg, take one which is perfectly clean, sponge it over several times with 1 to 50 solution of table salt, dry, then sponge over with 1 to 12 solution of silver nitrate. Keep your fingers out of this, or they will turn fast black. Then take a black paper stencil or a small contrasty film negative, cut a hole in a piece of black flannel somewhat smaller than the negative, and tie around the egg to hold the negative. Then bring into light, print out, wash and tone and fix like any printing-out paper. And don't eat the egg, for chemicals will go through the sh.e.l.l.

[Ill.u.s.tration: By A. H. Blake. FIG. 113.--THE EMBANKMENT, LONDON.]