Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1904 (Heft 6))

in color becomes perfectly delightful when rendered in black and white.
But there are wood subjects (mostly amongst the pines) in which nature,
with the aid of certain lightings, paints her pictures almost in one color, and
it is these studies in grays and browns that have such an especial charm.
Effects in woods vary so much, not only at different times of the day
and year, but according to the state of the atmosphere. I have seen the
tones in a pine wood entirely changed by a gentle rain, when the dark trunks
of the trees have become absolutely light, with almost an iridescent glow.
Mist in a wood gives all the charm of fairyland, and is one of the conditions
under which, to my own thinking, it is most bewitching, for much then is
left to the imagination. This is the time when nature lends the impres-
sionist photographer a hand. He " shall draw the thing as he sees it,” with
the great decorative forms of the trees looming out suggestively; or it may
be that the mist will isolate and accentuate a delicate but tortuous stem of
the undergrowth, whose topmost branch has succeeded in reaching,the day-
light among the big trees that surround it. Or a shaft of sunshine may dance
through the haze and branches, when the effect becomes more difficult and
yet more bewitching than ever. Under these circumstances, means toward
simplification and diffusion need not trouble the worker, for the kindly fog
will eliminate much that might not with a more accurate and clearer light be
in accord with the aims of the impressionist.
But one of the most bewitching aspects of the wood, although perhaps
not the most photographable, is to be seen when the year is young. " On
a moody April day, when spring’sblue eyes, though they smile on the earth
with a promise of summer, yet brim over suddenly,” and the glittering light
traceries of the birch, that " most beautiful of forest trees, the lady of the
woods,” sparkle out beneath the solemn-hued pines. Then, indeed, is a
wood lighted up with fairy-lamps of dazzling green, that will strain to the
utmost the camera-man's powers of interpretation.
As the seasons change, so does the wood. He who is not attracted by
its spring fashions will surely find inspiration in the richness of its autumn
setting or in the black-and-white solemnity of its winter garb. At all these
times it has an individual charm and beauty (to be seen and felt in no other
surroundings) that have not so far, I believe, been adequately expressed by
photography.
Stillness is essential to the spirit of a wood. Incidentally, it is also essen-
tial to the satisfactory working of a camera therein, as, generally speaking,
long exposures must be the order of the day. A gale blowing through a cathe-
dral seems hardly more misplaced than a hurricane in a wood; it carries away
with it all the poetry and sentiment that go to make the illusive charm of the
place. No longer does it seem the fitting stage for dryad or pixy, who must
inevitably disappear, shocked at the once stately trees that have so entirely
forgotten themselves in their wild, indecorous gambol with the elements.
" Dream on, O wood; O wind, stay in thy nest,
Nor wake the shadowy spirit of the fern,
Asleep along the fallen pine-tree's breast.” Will. A. Cadby.



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