Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 3))

designs at night. I don’tsee that we need hurry to want to do anything of
the kind.
Judicious under-exposure and the addition of plenty of bromide to the
developer are, of course, the greatest secrets of successful silhouette photog-
raphy; but the selection of a printing-paper runs them close. With gum
one can wash away all but the absolutely necessary blacks. Grays can be
made to vanish at a stroke of the brush, and irritating white spots in the
middle of a would-be absolute-black patch may be painted in with pigment
without showing a mark. The same applies to " Mezzograph ” paper,
which I have used a good deal for silhouette-making. The film of pigment
on mezzograph will stand rougher handling than gum, by the way, which
gives it a decided advantage.
Better even than moonlight for silhouette-hunting, is a snowy day with
no sunshine. By half shutting one’s eyes, every object appears cut out black
against the white carpet all around. On just such a day I was roaming once
near Thusis, a village of eastern Switzerland, when I came on a piece of road
with a forest on the hill-side above it, whose simplicity I felt sure would
make a picture if some object could be introduced at one special point. A
little distance away I noticed a few light wood sleighs being loaded with logs
to be taken from the forest to the village. The sleighs I knew would have
to pass down the road, so I set up my camera, focused, marked the precise
spot where the sleigh should be when I pressed the shutter-bulb, and then
simply waited till it came. Although the exposure was one-hundredth
of a second, the negative is not an absolute silhouette, but I made it so by
printing on mezzograph, and altered it in some trifling details.
For silhouette-work backed plates should be used. If you prefer cut
films, then don't hesitate to back them also. They need it very nearly as
much as plates. The difference between an unbacked and a backed film is
sometimes quite extraordinary.
This brings me to my last point, which is that, in my opinion, a
silhouette design ought almost always to be sharply focused. Fuzzy edges
are not wanted, when the whole strength of your design depends on those
edges. If gray half-tones are introduced, fuzziness may be admissible, but
not otherwise. The silhouette ought to be clear-cut. So, curiously enough,
the last word in these jottings is a sort of sop thrown to the truth-to-nature
individuals. But I fear they will be too ill-mannered to accept it.
Ward Muir.

34