Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1905 (Heft 9))

study much; the color is good, the definition is soft, and the grading rich;
the line of trees makes a good composition, and the whole is a most sane
and pleasant out-of-door study. No. 189, Sous l'Empire. In this figure-
study Mr. Peabody has a lack of definition in the features that quite enrages;
after all, a nose is a nose, and a chin a chin, etc., etc., and deserve some sort
of respectful definitions. The drapery is wooden and poor in lines, and,
altogether, is a print that in no sense deserves public exhibition, except that
it shows some effort, however mistaken it may be, to make something
different to “the usual thing.” The Koto Player. May I ask Mr. French
the reason for the affectation of placing his print on the extreme right of his
mount? It comes very awkwardly so for hanging with others, and is quite
unjustifiable for portfolio use. As placed it could have no meaning, except
if it occupied the left-hand page of a book the very wide margin on its left
might have a reason, but for exhibition purposes it is only an annoying
distraction. Mrs. Watson-Schütze’sHead of a Young Girl is a quite
delightful study, sympathetically lit and printed. Mrs. Jeanne Bennett's
Misty November Morning has nothing in it to warrant its title; one can not
import mist into a subject by a bad use of an uncorrected lens. The out-
of-focus distortion in this print is simply aggravating—neither realistic nor
artistic; and there is nothing in the lines, or massing, or tones to make it
acceptable otherwise. How very uncomfortable Nature would be if her
delicious woodlands really looked like this ! Mr. Mitchell Elliot’sRoad to
the Old Tavern—Winter is really good in suggesting softly lit snow-surface.
I think it would have gained in composition and reality by losing an inch
and a half at the bottom, especially as the image weakens and gives out close
to this edge, a bad technical fault, and I would like the tree cut away from
the left side; it mars the sense of distance ; it is a charming little picture,
however. No. 24, Mr. Rubincam’sboy study, would have been capital but
for the complete absence of legs or feet. If they were in black stockings,
what a fine chance to show technical control in their proper value against the
dark background! Why should difficulties be shirked? The fun of pho-
tography is in solving such problems.
No. 27. I can not in any way like Mrs. Peabody’sCaryl. The child
looks ill, is poorly posed and exposed, the print is badly trimmed, the lines
coming down to the very edge of the paper, while the undue amount of
heavy shadow at the top dwarfs the whole ; it is a disappointing work in
every way. It also affords a good example of the common error of placing
a print exactly in the center of a large mount with equal margins all round,
the result being that it looks “dropped” out of center and loses all sense of
proportion. No. 89, Mr. Drivet'sApproaching Storm, New Tork, can be quite
unreservedly praised; the distance is well kept, the buildings beautifully placed
and defined, and the sky very finely rich and true to title, without being at
all melodramatic. It is a picture that easily and most satisfactorily lives in
the mind's eye.
No. 54, Water Sprites, by Miss Alice Boughton, is a quite delightful
experiment, full of quaint fancy; though the whole is unnecessarily dark and

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