Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1904 (Heft 5))

inherently, good aristocrats all of them, things that would last, defy mere
fashion.
¶It is comforting to feel that our art will even now yield a few good works
already sealed as of permanent value.
GROWTH IN POWER OF OBSERVATION.
¶ How instructive a check on one's conceit it is to find that some other
worker has seen and made a finer thing from a subject that we ourselves
had dealt exhaustively — or at least exhaustingly — with! I have more
than once had that unpleasant jolt of the artistic sensibilities at sight of a
something I ought to have seen, but had not; a picture made, a composition
worked out, an effect patiently tracked, that, as soon as seen thus recorded
by some one else, one recognized should have been our special property.
¶ Every fresh building that I purpose studying suggests to me at first, as
does, indeed, every fresh place where one seeks to study nature, that here at
least is but little to do—one will soon get done here. And yet how
inevitable is the sequel after a day or so! The possibilities grow until
after a few weeks the melancholy as well as rejoiceful feeling arises that one
will never get done here — the chances of stuff are so endless that to record
them all and properly is hopeless. It is then that one’s collapse is most
painful, if some one else comes along and sees something fresher and richer
than we, for all study, have done.
¶ It is well, therefore, not to fatigue one’s self by too long a bout of work
in one place or building. A change of work is very beneficial to mind and
eye alike. On my last visit to York Minster, after a week’s hard work, I
had a free morning for the last one; cameras were packed up so that it was
no good thinking of them; and I was for once free to wander and enjoy
without attempting to “do” any one of the good things I might see. I
was free from that obsession a couple of cameras, large and small, at work in
different parts, implies, and which prevents the quite free-minded study of
further effects to be recorded. I never enjoyed the building more, and
perhaps in consequence of that enjoyment I observed over a dozen fine
things which I determined to make mine at my next visit. These I noted,
of course, for I could not free myself from the habit of note-book and pencil.
¶ All this suggests that a best and first rule would be to devote the first
few days in a cathedral to a serious, leisurely study, free from that pre-
occupation the knowledge of a camera being at work in a distant part always
imposes on one, and so preventing the quite free and unshackled power of
fresh observation. But of course this is after all but a mere counsel of
perfection, as I for one shall certainly never get advanced enough to put in
force so self-denying a restriction. For, even on a first visit, there will be
certain to appear so many entrancing things that simply must be got down
in case they never happen again, that to propose an empty-handed walk
round instead is too cold-blooded and impossible to endure.
¶ One has often to wait so long for a second happening of an effect due to
an atmospheric condition that will not recur when wanted, that not to try