Camera Craft ~ September 1934 ~ Notes On The Miniature Camera ~ About the Paper Negative by William Mortensen

Continuing work with a 35mm Leica camera, William Mortensen further described how to use techniques developed for large format images could be applied to the "miniature camera."

The use of paper negatives was talked about when I lived and worked as a B&W print technician in Hollywood, California.  We never used the process in the lab since we were devoted to cranking out museum quality prints at a rather hellatious rate and paper negatives would've slow down our entire process.  We would've needed to work much more closely with photographers and would've needed hours of work on one image.  There simply was zero time for such things.

After reading the following article, I wish I'd taken the time to explore this technique.  In fact, I wish I still had access to a darkroom to work this out in.  Alas, I and my colleagues were held under the St. Ansel, Group F 64 spell of "purist", "realistic" photography back in the day and digital photography arrived before I realized making paper negatives could add to the art and craft of photography.

What caught my attention is William Mortensen's stress on techniques used to avoid what he called the "Fuzzy Wuzzys."  St. Ansel used the same term and derisively applied it to Mortensen's work.  Alas, Mortensen himself preferred to avoid softness in his images.  Which underscores an obvious point that he who "wins" gets to write history.

This will be the last William Mortensen article that I re-post for now from the original 1934 Camera Craft publication.  In a month or two I'll try to remember to post a translation of an article from the Camera Club of Paris 1902 that talks about single element lenses, where to buy them (back in the day), and how to adjust the focus point to correct for chromatic aberration.

Until then, the following William Mortensen article is a real "banger" of a thing to read. 

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Notes On The Miniature Camera
William Mortensen
About the Paper Negative

There are probably two hundred thousand miniature cameras at present in use.  These represent the ultimate refinement of the experience and labours of the most skillful makers of optical apparatus in the world. Hundreds of miles of film pass through these cameras annually, and millions of exposures are made. But despite this tremendous expenditure of materials and energy, the pictorial output is amazingly small.  The mountain has indeed laboured, but to date nothing so lively and prolific as the proverbial mouse has made its appearance.  There are occasional creditable pictures made from miniature negatives, to be sure; but when compared with the colossal effort, the showing is not impressive.

As a tour de force of camera engineering the miniature instrument seems to exert a strange compulsion with many of its users to linger unduly over the technical aspects of their craft, with a proportionate disregard of the fact that the true end and aim of photography is the making of pictures. Light meters, thermometers, chronometers, logarithms, graphs and higher mathematics have converted minicam photography into a sort of scientific black magic. Amateur photographers assume the manner of initiates performing mysterious rites at the dark of the moon, mumbling gamma factors as they compound their developers. Snapping the shutter becomes a ceremony, and developing the negative, a sacrament. But at this point, apparently, the fine ecstacy exhausts itself; for nine out of ten minicam owners seem to be content for their final result with a perfunctory bromide enlargement of the most bromidic character. 

Even the best workers are inclined to distrust all types of "processing."  No doubt they fear the loss, through processing, of definition and gradation, virtues which they rightly treasure very highly.. As a matter of fact, miniature negatives may be processed, as I have discovered through my own experience, without serious loss of gradation, and with an apparent gain in definition. The paper negative and bromoil transfer are processes that the miniature camera worker would do well to employ.

For a process of such great potentialities there has been surprisingly little literature on the subject of the paper negative. This paucity of material is no doubt partially due to the simple and obvious nature of the fundamental principle of the process: "paper negative"
the term is practically self-explanatory.  But most amateur experiments with the procedure terminate very unsatisfactorily; for there is a great deal more to the process than the fact that it utilizes a negative made of paper. Correctly understood and handled, the paper negative is one of the noblest processes available to the pictorialist. It is employed by Echague, who is probably the outstanding pictorialist of these times. The scope it provides for selectivity and control is only slightly less than that afforded by the bromoil transfer.  Indeed, I have found in working with pupils that it affords the best possible preliminary training for the latter process.  Not only are the facilities for local alteration similar, but a similar type of original print is required.  A print that is correct in quality for a paper negative is also suitable to being converted into a bromoil matrix.

In broad outline the paper negative procedure as I practice it is as follows: A bromide enlargement is made from the original negative. After the desired alterations are made on the enlargement, it is placed with it's emulsion side in contact with emulsion of another sheet of bromide paper and, by printing through, converted into a negative. Further alterations may be made on this negative, after which it is again placed in contact, emulsion to emulsion, with a third sheet of bromide paper on which the final positive print is made.

 

The procedure given above differs in various respects from that advocated by other workers. For example, instead of starting with a simple bromide enlargement, some advocate making a film positive. I prefer the paper positive on account of its simplicity and much greater ease of alteration. Extensive alteration of a miniature film positive is a
practical impossibility, whereas the enlarged print allows for changes in the same terms in which they will appear on the final print. Another point of difference involves the making of the final print from the paper negative. At this juncture, instead of placing the emulsions in contact, one authority advises putting the emulsion side of the negative against the plain side of the priniting paper, so that the light passes through the thickness of both papers. This procedure, he suggests, minimizes grain, because the texture of one paper tends to neutralize that of the other. My experience, however, indicates that this method introduces undesirable diffusion and fuzziness: keeping the emulsions always in contact, on the other hand, permits of no loss of definition. As far as grain is concerned, I am unable to discern any difference between the results of the two methods.

Much more important than the mechanical details of the process ( variants of which each practitioner may work out for himself ) are certain requisites of print and negative quality.  It is failure to understand these that is chiefly responsible for the unsatisfactory outcome of most experiments with paper negatives. Not every print by any means, not
even every good print, is adaptable to the process. There are three of these requisites, and they must all be observed if good results are to be obtained.

CONTRAST MUST BE AVOIDED. The tendency of the paper negative, as of most other processes, is to exaggerate contrast. What seems an effectively contrasty print is often converted into sheer black and white. Hence great care must be taken to secure and preserve all the middle half-tones. There are three sources of contrast, all of which  must be avoided, (a) It may be the result of one-sided, unbalanced lighting.  A fairly flat lighting is much better for processing, (b) The contrast may be inherent in the local colour of the subject, with large areas of light and dark placed in juxtaposition, (c) Contrast may be of chemical origin. For this reason, in working with paper negatives, it is necessary to avoid contrasty emulsion on the original negative, as well as on the bromide paper, and to avoid likewise contrasty developers for paper negative and final print.

THE SOFTNESS OF THE ORIGINAL PRINT AND OF THE PAPER NEGATIVE MUST BE INTRINSIC AND GENUINE. A sort of spurious softness is to be obtained by under-development.  But a print thus secured will not produce a good paper negative.  A print of
the right type shows a scanty use of pure black and white, but a full and complete range of half-tones lying between. Such a print is to be gotten only by full development and correct quality of the original negative.

THE ORIGINAL NEGATIVE MUST BE OF CORRECT QUALITY.  In larger negatives slight deviations from the standard may be permitted; but in miniature negatives each deviation is magnified to a disaster when it is enlarged.  A negative of correct quality utilizes the full range of half-tones that its emulsion affords.  It therefore exhibits a very sparing use of either full black or complete transparency, reserving the former for nothing but the intensest high-lights, and the latter for nothing but the deepest accents of the shadows. Between these two extremes there must be shown a complete range of translucent half-tones, providing modelling by delicate gradation in the light area, and giving a suggestion of drawing in the darker area. This type of negative is very difficult to obtain unless one understands the precise factors of exposure and development that enter into it. Broadly speaking, these factors may be summed up in two rules. ( 1 ) The minimum of exposure. ( 2 ) The maximum of development. By "minimum of exposure" is meant an exposure based on the light area (rather than on the shadows, as the older rule has it). Such a procedure preserves all the half-tones of the light area, instead of lumping them together with the high-lights as the conventionally over-exposed negative does. But to secure all these half-tones it is essential that the second rule be equally observed. By "maximum of development" is meant full development. Any negative that has to be "jerked" from the developer in order to prevent the light area from blocking up is ipso facto an over-exposed negative. With a developer of reduced alkalinity there is no such thing as over-development if the original exposure has been correct.

 

The same two rules must be observed in making prints and paper negatives in order to save at every point the all-important middle tones.  For this reason I not only employ the briefest possible exposure compatible with the above theory of density, but employ the A solution of D64 at one quarter strength (i.e., one part of D64-A plus three parts of water).

In addition to a negative of correct quality, the following equipment and materials are required for the paper negative procedure as hereafter outlined.
Projection printer.
11x14 printing frame.
Retouching desk, sub-illuminated.  ( Failing this, a contact printer will serve. )
Carbon pencil, Wolfe BB.
Felt stump.
Venus pencil, medium.
An ample supply of XF bromide paper. (Defender velour black F)

For clearness of demonstration I have chosen an example showing a rather extreme amount of control. Not only has a background been added, but there are numerous local alterations. The model was originally photographed in front of an illuminated white screen under a flat front light. A tall gray box served for the vertical form in the background. 

 Note that the original print (fig. 1) is amply supplied with half-tones, and that there is nowhere in it an extreme contrast of black and white. As a first step in planning the picture, make a small enlargement (about 4x6), determine the most effective framing, and with pencil and eraser make a rough preliminary lay-out of the intended structural alterations.

 Using this as a guide, proceed with making an 11x14 enlargement on F paper, framing it in accordance with the plan. Be careful not to over-expose the print, and develop it for four minutes in the A solution of D64, one quarter strength.

[My comment: Developer Formula D-64 is then described... but is not provided here...]

After the print is dried and pressed proceed to make the desired alterations. Work with pencil on the face of the print, and with transmitted light. Use the Venus pencil for detail and the carbon pencil for broad passages when intense black is required. The stump is used to accomplish gradations of tone. Begin working with the head. Do not make the error of starting with the background, lest you lay in the tone too dark. The head and figure, as the dominating element of the picture, must determine the key of the other planes of the picture. Emphasize the shadows, rounding the contour of the head and the orbits of the eyes, and filling in between strands of hair and badly placed light passages.
If it is necessary to get extremely dense blacks, turn the print over and work on the back also. Remember always that it is the transparency value of this print that is of  importance, not the surface appearance.

Proceed down the figure, adjusting the drapery and shadowing the  breasts slightly to emphasize the modeling of the body.  Notice (by comparison with the final print) that the vegetables in the lower corners are considerably lowered in tone to lead the eye to the center of the picture.

When the key tone of the dominating plane of the picture is established,  begin work on the next plane, which in this case is the timber and stone wall. Be careful to avoid mechanical monotony in the stones, and note that they are suggested with light and shade and not literally drawn in. Keep this plane in a lighter tone than that of the figure. The other planes are built up in order, with progressive lightening of tone.  Note that the distant spires echo, in form and number, the motive of the hanging moss, and that the mountains carry out, but not too obviously, the rhythm of the neck-line. The sky is darkened inward from the edges to bring the strongest contrast opposite the head.

To make the paper negative, lay this altered print in the printing frame, emulsion upward, press it into close contact with the glass and lay a piece of F paper over it, emulsion down. Before locking up the frame be sure that the two papers are in absolute contact, for any bubbles or bulges are disastrous. Give it an exposure commensurate with four minute development, with the lens of the projection printer wide open.

The paper negative thus obtained ( Fig. 2 ) shows some increase in contrast, but, thanks to the softness and gradation of the original print, this increase is not serious.  At this stage, incorporation of light passages is accomplished. As with the initial print, the work is started on the principal plane of the picture. The detail of the hair is renewed, and the high-lights on the face are intensified. The modeling of the body beneath the dress is suggested by a few high-lights. The neck-line of the dress is lightened and almost eliminated in order to pull the light passages of the picture together. For the same reason the embroidery pattern on the right shoulder is much subdued and considerably lightened in tone. High-lights are intensified on the sash, on the fingers and on the vegetables in the foreground. Notice also that the bad fold breaking the line of the right sleeve is eliminated, and a slight correction made of the disagreeable foreshortening of the fingers of the left hand. Detail and character is given to the confused mass of foliage at the left. Passing then to the other planes of the picture, the high-lights are intensified on the stones in the wall and the sky slightly brightened near the head.

The procedure for making the final print is the same as that described for the paper negative.   The exposure and development times are the same. In printing, the principal figure may be given increased dominance, if desired, by "dodging" with the negative removed.

 

 The picture "The Sophisticate" was made by a pupil of mine. I have included it because it is an excellent "piece of work and because it shows the extremely personal type of expression possible with the paper negative process. In this case the formal aspect of the figure has been emphasized by bringing out the wiry outline and making it tight and rigid.

Like Projection Control or any other control process, the paper negative is liable to unskilful and ignorant abuses that make the judicious grieve.   Paper negative prints are frequently to be seen in salons and photographic annuals that betray complete lack of knowledge of human anatomy by placing the high-lights in utterly impossible locations. Others, by harsh and obviously drawn outlines, completely violate the integrity of the photographic original. The process must not be regarded as a means of "doping up" an indifferent picture to conceal earlier technical blunders: technically, the original print should be able to stand on its own merits. A control process lays a heavy burden on its user because it cuts him off from the precise mechanical guidance of the camera. Unless
he knows what he wants to do and how to do it, he is very certain to find that what he has made is a mistake, and not a picture.

Camera Craft ~ August 1934 ~ Notes On The Miniature Camera by William Mortensen

In discovering William Mortensen's book series on photography I came to appreciate his clarity of thought expressed in his writings.

Reading further in the 1934 Camera Craft publication I stumbled upon the following article.  It's written about using a Leica 35mm camera.  Up until now I've only seen photos of him using 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 cameras, so his use of 35mm came as something of a surprise to me.

1934 was rather early in the adoption of what they used to call the "miniature camera", so these insights and demonstrations of practical use are quite interesting. 

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Most of us will recollect, among the more terrifying experiences of our childhood, the day that we were carefully scrubbed and led to have our pictures taken. Two details usually dominate such remembrances.  First, a man who bounded about, dishevelled and distracted, doing strange things and making strange noises. This odd creature we subsequently identified as the photographer. Second, an apparatus slightly smaller than a freight car but much more alarming in appearance, apparently designed by a Spanish Inquisitor out of spare parts of a draw-bridge, which glowered horrifically under a black hood at the far end of the room.

When the owner of a modern miniature instrument compares his compact handful of camera with this medieval monster and realizes that it can do everything that the monster did except frighten children into convulsions, it is obvious to him that, in the material sense, photography is at present making huge advances. Unfortunately many a Leica or Contax owner is failing to take full advantage of the peculiar abilities of his
camera. He seems content to treat it as a sort of super-Kodak for securing super-snap-shots which he steps up into unimaginative enlargements of the drug store type. The miniature camera, of course, admirably fulfills such pedestrian purposes as keeping records of travel and sporting events and Junior with his new bicycle and similar domestic history; but it is not so generally realized that it excells all other types of equipment for photography of the creative, pictorial type.

 

Some of the advantages of the miniature camera as applied to pictorial work are so
obvious that they need only to be mentioned. Such for example are its cheapness of operation facilitating free experimentation, and its small size which makes it very apt in securing angle shots and in taking prompt advantage of accidentally provided opportunities. 

The lens of short focal length (50 mm) that is regularly supplied as stock equipment with both kinds of miniature cameras, is, if properly understood, the type best suited to pictorial purposes.  Such a lens has, of course, much greater depth of field than one of the longer focal lengths which are the standard choice of most of the old-line photographers. This increased depth of field has the effect of rendering the subject in terms of flat patterns of light and dark areas instead of in terms of greater and lesser definition.
To be sure, the short focal length produces in certain instances considerable abberation and distortion of drawing. This point have all of us is a favorite with the proponents of long focal lengths.  We seen pictures in which feet, protruded toward the camera, take on freakish dimensions, or in which a horse, photographed head-on, dwindles to dwarfish hind-quarters. Such pictures used to be exhibited as demonstrating the faults of a short focal length; rather, they demonstrate faulty arrangement of subject-matter. Slight resourcefulness on the part of the photographer of such awful examples would have enabled him to compose his material into a two-dimensional plane and simultaneously eliminate the abberation and produce a more pleasing pictorial result. The short focal length lens, by forcing its user thus to arrange his material, forces him also to give thought to such primary pictorial considerations as linear patterns and notan values.

I have come to much prefer, for pictorial use, the view finder of the miniature camera to the ground-glass of cameras of the reflex type. The very smallness of the image in the view finder causes one to judge its pictorial values in terms of large planes and broad patterns of light and dark.  Indeed it is impossible under normal conditions, to see things in the ground-glass in the two-dimensional aspect they will assume when photographed. For when one closes down the diaphragm to bring the back-ground into focus, the image on the glass becomes too dim and dark to be of any use.

The quality of selectivity, which distinguishes pictorial photography from photography that is merely realistic and fact-recording, is readily achieved with the miniature camera. Of course the very flexibility and portability of the little instrument gives it extreme freedom in the selection of subject-matter and effective angles; but a more significant selection is achieved in the mere process of enlarging the 35 millimeter negative to an 11x14 print. This tremendous amplification emphasises planes and patterns and subordinates details, keeping perfect gradation with no apparent loss in definition. A landscape is seen by the miniature camera, not as a group of contradictorily clamouring details, but as large masses and simple planes as the artist sees it. Similarly a portrait with a miniature camera reveals the structure and dominating characteristics of a face, rather than its lesser details, its textures and its blemishes.

The various procedures of Projection Control— framing, local printing, dodging, distortion, and montage which I have discussed in previous articles, are all applicable to miniature negatives and greatly increase the small camera's scope for selectivity.

Such special processes as the little-understood bromoil transfer and the neglected paper negative are particularly happy mediums for working up the products of the miniature camera. Both are susceptible to a high degree of control and provide a great stimulus to a worker with imagination. In an article to follow, I will consider the advantages of the paper negative to miniature pictorialists.

Most minicam owners nowadays are greatly hampered in getting the best out of their cameras by several technical obsessions that are earnestly fostered by dealers and manufacturers. These obsessions are four in number and are concerned, respectively, with (1) grainlessness, (2) speed, (3) colour correction, and (4) gadgets.

Under the vogue for grainlessness there have been marketed thousands of gallons of developer - some good, some useless, some consisting of old stand-byes in fancy bottles with new labels, and some definitely poisonous, to susceptible individuals. As a matter of fact, grainlessness is not particularly related to extremely modern methods and formulas.
I have, in my files, many ten-year-old negatives that were developed in the tabloid Rytol solution and are nearly devoid of grain. For pictorial use a certain amount of grain is rather an advantage than otherwise, as it produces a vibration that is more effective than a (technically) more perfect print. In making bromoil transfers considerable grain in the matrix is permissible as the graininess of the processes tends to counteract the grain of the original print.

The speed obsession takes on two manifestations: speed and lenses.  Instead of working out the possibilities of a lens of moderate aperture, the bedeviled minicam owner sets his ideal at something that looks like a locomotive headlight, and hastily acquires F 2 and F 1.5 and dreamily contemplates the day when he will be able to own F 0.9. Save for very special problems, such stupendous apertures are not of the slightest use to the average worker. Speed is a quality that can be gained only by the loss of other qualities much more important. A lens of F 2 aperture is quite incapable of obtaining the depth of field necessary for pictorial work. Of course such a lens may be closed down till the desired definition is obtained, but the lens in such a case might as well have been F 3.5 in the
first place, thus saving one the embarrassment of a large amount of excess baggage of expensive and un-needed glass. The weight of such lenses out of proportion to the camera, and is apt in my experience, to cause vibration of the tripod. Films have similarly become afflicted by the speed mania. Speed emulsions and super-speed emulsions have made their appearance, and without doubt extra-hyper-ultra-super-speed emulsions are
just around the corner. One five-hundredth of a second on par-speed is film is amply rapid to care for all normal events of man and beast. As in the case of lenses, film emulsions are speeded up only by the sacrifice of desirable qualities. It has been my experience that the super sensitive emulsions invariably produce degraded half-tones with greatly increased grain. 

The obsession for colour correction has led some owners of miniature cameras a merry dance of desperate experimentation with strange types of films and with filters of all colours of the rainbow and some new ones.  The result of this experimentation has for most workers been very meager, and many of the so-called "successful" prints would have been much better if they had been done on ortho film without filters. Frequently indeed, the distortion of colour values is a pictorial advantage. If one accepts the premise of the creative pictorial worker that the end of photographic art is not fact but the interpretation of fact in terms of the medium, the zeal for colour correction is seen to be of little account.  The conversion of colour into a scale of grays is a matter of accepted
convention, and the change of the relative position of some colours on this scale does not alter the convention.

The obsession for gadgets is perhaps the most prevalent of all the minicam owner. There are adjuncts, false ideals that afflict the average appurtenances and attachments without number that monthly sing their siren songs from the adverising pages of photographic journals. Some of it is special equipment designed for specialists, but a great deal of it
is gadgets, dingueses, thingumies and doodads of a fantastic degree of uselessness that seems to have been conceived in the fertile brain of Rube Goldberg. The special equipment is undoubtedly well adapted to its purpose, but for the average amateur to stock up on boxes of lenses and racks of filters is not only unnecessary but a distinct hinderance to his advancement in his craft. Many a miniature camera is now lying discarded on the shelf because its disgusted owner was not able to make his ponderous and overwhelming equipment do what it was supposed to do. To try to improve one's pictures by buying complicated equipment is like studying differential calculus in order to learn to add two plus two. Many an enthusiast has sunk a thousand dollars in equipment without bothering to learn how to make a correct exposure or how to correctly develop it.

In speaking of the vanity of gadgets pioneer struggler with miniature cameras I do not speak lightly.  As a pioneer struggler with his miniature camera who has sowed his wild para-phenylenediamine and wasted his substance in riotous experimentation, I speak from the heart when I say that gadgets are the prime time-wasters and energy-disperser. There was a time when I too lent an ear to their seductions and tried them all. Every dingus that could be hung onto a camera, every foul brew that could be used for developing, every paper, every film that the market offered— with these I wasted my youth. My once great beauty, alas, has faded, my back is bowed and my feet are flat; but I have learned to abjure gadgets and haphazard experimentation.

This attitude does not imply any blindness to genuine advances in methods or equipment. But such significant advances always so obviously and unmistakably fill a definite need that there is no possibility of confusing them with the common run of ingeniously useless inventions. Such an advance was made recently, for example, in developing the automatic focusing device for the projection enlarger.  In general the use of new things is prone to run ahead of the proper understanding of them. Many a minicam owner would do well to leave technique to the technicians and put his camera to the almost forgotten task of taking pictures.

In equipment of the extremest simplicity lies the best hope for success in pictorial work with the miniature camera. Such a list of essentials as the one that I shall presently suggest will, I fear, seem insultingly meager to the minicamist who is prone to console himself for lack of results by treating himself to fresh equipment, after the manner of the well-known feminine habit of buying a new hat to rouse the drooping spirit. The list,
small as it is, is adequate for all purposes, saving only the most specialized, and one could easily spend several life-times in learning to use it properly.

Here then is the list:
Miniature camera with 50 mm lens.
Cable release. 
K2. filter.
A hood.
6 magazines.
Green viewing glass.
Vertical enlarger with good lens and condensers.

This equipment is used in connection with the following materials and formulas.
Eastman Panatomic film.
Defender Medium weight white rough matt paper.
For developing, D76 (Eastman) or a similar boric acid-borax formula.

Equipment of value only as it is used, and nothing is included above that is not immediately useful in the making of pictures.  Abjured along with hampering excess of equipment are all faddish procedures relating to temperature, rinsing, washing, drying, etc., over which minicam owners have spent tormented days and sleepless nights. Much more important are skilful handling, clean apparatus, fresh chemicals, and good sense.

As I have claimed such pictorial advantages for the miniature camera, I have chosen for demonstration a pictorial subject involving an extreme degree of romanticism and illusionary quality. "Indian Serenade" despite its delicately lyric vein and exotic atmosphere, is assembled from quite common and ordinary materials. The picture was taken indoors, and the lengthy perspective was not greater than twenty feet.

The material components of the picture were the following:
A white wall.
A dish pan of water.
A cement floor.
Two people.
A baby spot.
Some artificial flowers.
Gleanings from rag bags.
Eight yards of pink gauze of two shades.
Two grass mats.
Prunings of a rose bush.
A musical instrument.

The picture is arranged in a series of parallel planes. The first and most distant plane is comprised of the sky and mountains, the second, of the tree and figures, the third, of the foreground. Thus a clear sense of recession and space is given, without loss of two dimensional quality. 

 

A rough pencil sketch served to establish the main planes of the picture, to give an approximate idea of the linear and notan pattern, and to indicate framing and relating of the figures to the picture-space. I find that use of such a preliminary sketch is indispensible, as it compells one to visualize in advance and obviates aimless experimentation at the time of shooting.

The set was carefully arranged before hand. Directly in front of the white background was laid the pink gauze, bunched up to represent the mountains, the paler colour serving for the distant ranges and the darker for the nearer ones.  Five feet from the background the grass mats were put down, the flowers sprinkled about, and the tree suspended from the ceiling Then for about fifteen feet in front of the grass mats, the cement floor was well wet down, laying in the water in streaks parallel to the background. The costumes consist simply of a few bits of cloth pinned about and draped. The materials were selected for their photographic and notan qualities rather than their intrinsic beauty, taking due care, of course, to avoid extreme contrasts of black and white. Authenticity was not aimed at; rather the endeavor was to suggest the spirit of the oriental garb with as few elements as possible.

 

In arranging the models it was found necessary to seat the man on a small stool in order to create the desired pyramidal composition. The tree was shifted somewhat and a few twigs lopped in order to bring it into more harmonious conformation with the figures. The flowers were adjusted until they furnished effectively placed accents.

The white background was well illuminated, and from another source characters were given a flat front light.  For the moon a "baby Klieg" was used, which with the aid of a cardboard mask was made to cast a spot of intense illumination on the background. To avoid hitting the characters with the shaft of light it was necessary to place the Klieg to
one side. This of course produced an oval moon until the hole in the cardboard was altered to correct this distortion.

Finally, the whole set-up was studied through a blue glass, observing the notan pattern, noting and correcting a few bad contrasts. The moon was moved to its most effective placement relative to the heads, and a last slight rearrangement was made of the foliage.

The camera was placed on a low tripod, about five inches from the floor and twenty feet from the back wall. This low position of the camera was chosen to get a low horizon line, giving dominance to the figures and making it easier to build a pyramidal composition. It also secures the best reflections from the wet floor. A large number of exposures were taken, about three rolls in all, with slight variations in exposure, and gradual and slight changes in the inter-relationship of the smaller elements of the picture. 

Enlarged proofs about 3 by 4 inches were made of all the perfect negatives in the three rolls. Then followed a long process of elimination and selection on the basis of two standards subject interest and notan pattern. When the group was reduced to two or three the final choice was on a basis of subject interest. Thus three standards of choice entered into this stage of the picture. 

1. Negative quality.
2. Notan pattern.
3. Subject interest.

A considerable amount of Projection Control was employed in making the final print. Much care was used in framing so as to secure the proper relationship of the figures to the picture space. Dodging with the finger tip was resorted to in order to liqhten the moon and darken the tone of the rest of the picture. Through dodging also were secured the deep tones in the upper corners of the picture.

 

( To be continued )