File:The American annual of photography (1922) (14778522431).jpg

Identifier: americanannualof36newy (find matches)
Title: The American annual of photography
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors:
Subjects: Photography
Publisher: New York : Tennant and Ward
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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keeping ones eyes open and selecting asetting which will harmonize with the thought one wishes toexpress, and it cannot be too strongly emphasized that no placeshould be rejected because of preconceived ideas; each shouldreceive consideration, not on its character, but strictly on itsmerits as an arrangement in black and whie. It is, of course,necessary that the surroundings shall not compete in interestwith the sit er, but this is equally true of indoor work. Still,the caution may perhaps not be out of place, since there isgreater danger of such an occurrence outdoors than in, theordinary surroundings being more varied. Whether the back-ground is foliage, flowers, or any other varied subject, thedefinition should be such as to prevent its deteriorating into acollection of meaningless blobs of light, and this brings usto another matter of importance, the lens. A soft-focus lens is desirable in all portrait work; sharpdefinition, however valuable in scientific photography, is dis- 152
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THE FONT. L. D. Sweet. tinctly out of place in portraiture. The writer does not meanto advocate the extreme bhirriness seen in some pseudo-artisticportrait and genre photographs, but the definition of an anas-tigmat does not correspond to that of the eye. A famousscientist once remarked that if an opician should give himso poor an instrument as the human eye, he would reject itscornfully. This is true enough, so far as it goes; the normaleye is subject to all the errors of an uncorrected lens with theexception of astigmatism, and many eyes own that fault aswell. It is true that the eye possesses certain advantages overany lens, such as automatic focusing, automatic diaphragming,and the power of rotation, which makes it, in effect, an ex-treme wide-angle instrument, but the fact remains that itdoes not give precise definition, and an objective which doesthis cannot correctly represent the subject as the eye sees it.Therefore, a certain amount of softness of definition is de-sirable, an

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