Making Your Camera Pay Part 2

Nine-Story Building Collapses.

Traveling Mail-Box on Interurban Car.

Clever Method of Advertising Perfume.

Makes Suit Out of Stamps.

Wellesley Girls Have a "Sneezing Closet."

Raising Chickens on a Back Porch.

In _Popular Mechanics_:

Owner of Artificial Hands is Proud of Dexterity.

Imperishable Burial Robes Shown on Living Models.

Novelty Window-Sign Spells Words with Snowflakes.

Imposing New Bridge at Jacksonville.

Street-Sign Calls for Help if Robbers Invade Store.

New Style Log-Cabin Built Like Stockade.

Vines Completely Cover Office-Building.

Beautiful Ice Stalagmites are Pranks of Jack Frost.

Unique Wood-Sculptures are Work of a Decade.

Electric Warehouse-Truck Performs Heavy Tasks.

Hydraulic Jack Tears Up Street-Car Tracks.

Man-Power Onion-Planter Sets an Acre a Day.

Grotesque Images Reward Motor-Cycle Race Winners.

Weak Derrick Starts Work of Steel-Building.

Concrete Logging Piers are Used in Lumber-Industry.

World's Largest Clock Keeps Accurate Time.

Grotesque Face on Auto Advertises Carnival.

River-Bed Proves to be a Rich Coal-Mine.

Outlets of Odd Shapes Made for Irrigation.

Unusual Park-Playground Built in Circus-Form.

Giant Vase, Lawn-Ornament, is Made of Concrete.

Old Silo in Railroad-Yard Houses Little Store.

Street Rises so Abruptly Four Flights of Steps are Necessary.

Church Uses Bill-Board to "Sell" Scriptures.

This wide variety of subjects cannot but serve to show that even in very small towns there are many opportunities for salable pictures.

More than that, there are markets for prints of:

Statues Blacksmith-shops Farm light-plants Sheep Landscapes Paintings Girls' heads Farm-buildings New inventions New achievements Live game Birds in flight Industrial arts Fields of grain Desert-views Domestic animals Poultry Harbors Garage-methods Railroading Concrete-construction Flowers Electrical appliances Live-stock prize-winners Art-museums Motorboats Musical work Shoe-factories Prize-dogs Yachts Farm-scenes Mural decorations Seascapes Gardening operations Interior decorations Designs Camping-scenes Trapped wild animals Freaks Cattle Orchards Time-saving plans Social progress Fas.h.i.+ons Wharves Paint-departments Mills New banks Large estates Factory-equipment Show-window displays Store-fronts Motorcycles Economic interest Good and bad roads Spraying-methods Counter-displays Blasting Landscape-gardening Sports

If you live in a large city you have the additional opportunities to obtain photographs such as are published in the _Mid-Week Pictorial_ and the _Ill.u.s.trated Review_, and also in some of the large national magazines and in the rotogravure-sections of the leading Sunday newspapers. Although the large city offers more opportunities for photographs of celebrities and such, there is much compet.i.tion. The photographer in an average-size city may not have frequent opportunities for photographs of renowned persons; but he has many other chances for salable photographs, which evens up things.

Sometimes, a notable person does come to town; but I would no more presume to tell you here to camp on his trail than I would dare to remark to a duck-hunter: "Pardon me, old man, but you'd better pull your trigger. There's a bird right where you've pointed your gun."

IV

WHAT NOT TO PHOTOGRAPH

Knowing _what_ to photograph is no more important than knowing _what not_ to photograph. I cannot show you so easily by example the kind of photographs editors will not buy; for a search of any number of magazines will fail to unearth such examples.

Experience is an expensive school; but, sometimes, the others are closed because of lack of patronage. It would seem that when you learn _what_ to photograph you should learn automatically _what not_ to photograph; and, indeed, you should; but you don't. However, there is another way. After sending a photograph to a score of publications, and after the photograph is returned from the same score of publications, you may truthfully say: "Well, I've discovered one thing that those editors don't want."

Editors have very clear reasons why they don't buy certain kinds of photographs. The editor is there to produce a live, newsy, unusual publication. He buys only live, newsy, unusual photographs. What could be simpler?

Publications do not want photographs which are similar to other photographs that they have already printed. The reason is obvious. To take an example from my own early days: a shoe-dealer, for an advertis.e.m.e.nt, placed a huge pair of shoes, size 35, in his window. I grasped the opportunity to make a salable photograph. It did sell; but not to _Popular Mechanics_, for the editor wrote that he was unable to use it because he had printed, several months before, a picture of a huge pair of shoes made for a circus sideshow worker. Consequently, the subject of your photograph may be just the thing the editor would want if he hadn't had his requirements already satisfied. Therefore, study those photographs which have been printed, and make newer and better ones.

When the King of England comes to town, it may be all very well to command him to stand still, to look serious or to smile, for a picture of him so posed may be literally "eaten up" by the local newspapers; but a national weekly, such as _Collier's_, demands something different. Posed photographs are at a discount. They are too plainly "pictures of men having their pictures made." What is wanted are life and action. It isn't necessary to ask the King to stand on his head.

Ask him to shake hands with the Chief-of-Police; or let him do something else which shows he has the power of action.

On an invaluable rejection-slip prepared by a national magazine, examples are given of "What we want and don't want." Under a photograph of Senator Johnson with upraised fist, as if he were driving home a point in his speech, is printed: "Here the upraised fist does the business--makes action, life--and transforms what would otherwise be just an ordinary likeness of Senator Johnson into a striking and arresting picture."

But if a photograph is sufficiently unusual it may be without life and yet may sell, although it gains materially by a show of action. Under a photograph of a floating submarine, the rejection-slip notes: "No action here; but it is safe to say that few of the readers of this magazine skipped this one when it appeared. Submarines are common today; but not the kind that carry huge twelve-inch guns." Similarly under a photograph of three men standing in a row and looking with a "where's-the-birdie?" expression at the camera, the caption is: "A posed picture and, as is usual in such circ.u.mstances, a dead one. We used it because a story centering around these men was a singularly interesting one appealing to a large audience in America." But no matter how extraordinary a photograph is, it gains a hundred-fold by exhibiting signs of _life_.

True, a "dead" picture may sell; but a live one will sell more quickly, and the photographer's work will be more in demand, and the resulting cheque will be larger--much larger.

If you make a photograph of a building--even for instance, a new a.r.s.enal--you will never sell it to such a publication as the New York _Times_ roto-section. The rejection-slip says, under such a picture: "There isn't even a human being in it to relieve the severity of the building's hard lines and the flat expanse of water. We do not care for such pictures." True, a photograph of a building--and of a building only--may sell for a few dollars to an architectural magazine; but more dollars and a bigger future come from putting life into photographs and in getting your work into the national weeklies as a result.

Again, no magazine wishes to buy a photograph of something not new. A monument, if photographed a moment after the unveiling and with the crowd around it, is a likely seller; but if the photographer waits several years, a print of the monument is unsalable. And that is not strange: you prefer fresh to cold-storage eggs.

The big secret of the successful press-photographer is the introduction of human beings into his photographs of inanimate objects. Human beings have a deep interest in each other. When one is introduced into a picture, human-interest is introduced at the same time; and, if the human being is pictured in the act of doing something, the interest is even higher. For no one ever outgrows the question, "What ya doin', mister?"

_Popular Science Monthly_ says: "We want good, clear photographs of a human being doing something of a mechanical nature. The subjects must be new." If a new invention is pictured alone, it is lifeless and meaningless. But let a human being operate it and a photograph of it gains in value.

One has only to apply his common sense to the matter. If a murder is committed in the city, the newspapers will not demand photographs of the corpse; it will do very well to obtain a photograph of the "arrow-points-to-the-scene-of-the-crime" variety.

One has to depend wholly on his "nose for news" and this sometimes proves treacherous. "A human-interest photograph sometimes slips past the trained nose of a photographer of twenty years' experience and is picked up by a beginner," to paraphrase Charles Phelps Cus.h.i.+ng. And, on the other hand, the old-timer may snap away confidently at a subject which the beginner has scorned, and then find he has an unsalable print on his hands. Sometimes, so to say, "noses for news" contract colds and are unable to scent a subject's salability. But colds may be cured and the scents picked up once more. The best remedy is to stop, to think, and to sniff again.

There is a market somewhere for every good print. There is no market anywhere for a print that is not good.

The best part of the whole business is this: no one--not even old Nick himself--can induce an editor to buy a photograph he does not want; and if, on the other hand, he knows he can use it, he will buy it at once, be it offered by Donald Thompson, who is a world-famed press-photographer, or by John Brown of Smithville, whose first attempt it may be.

V

SIZE, SHAPE AND FORM

Aspiring fictionists learn at some stage of their budding genius that one long stride toward editorial favor lies in the proper preparation of the ma.n.u.script. Just so, a photograph which is not prepared in accordance with editorial standards suffers a handicap.

Some editors specify the size of photograph they prefer. Thus, _Collier's_ prefers 4 5 prints; but it will use prints larger, and a few smaller than that size. In the same way, _Garden Magazine_ reports that it prefers 6-1/2 8-1/2 prints, and the Thompson Art Company says it prefers the 5 7 or 8 10 size.

Other magazines make no mention of size. _Popular Mechanics_ reports: "The size of the print is not so important as clearness and gloss."

Indeed, the greater number of magazines do not specify a preferable size because by so doing they discourage contributors of prints which are desirable, but not of the size specified.

If a magazine insists on having prints of one certain size the photographer should not be discouraged because his camera does not make photographs of those dimensions. The making of enlargements is now no more difficult than the making of contact-prints; if the negative is sharply focused and the lens of the enlarging-machine is good, an enlargement will not differ much in quality from a small print.