Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1907 (Heft 18))

THE ABC OF PHOTOGRAPHY.

U means Universal, just the lens, sir, for you:
A long-focus wide-angle that works at f.2.
The papers—you take them?—
Say that all makers make them,
A fact that's immensely important if true.
V stands for Values, a term which we use
In comparing pictorial shadows and shoes.
In Philistia’s tents
It means dollars and cents,
But with us it means any old thing that we choose.
W’S for Whistler, the same
From whom all the foolishness came,
Though I’m bound to believe
That he’d laugh in his sleeve
At the things that are done in his name.
X is the old algebraic “John Doe” —
The sign of the factor that none of us know.
Which is why, when we state
The speed of a plate,
We shrug and say: “X 27 or so.”
Y are the Yellow Streaks often observed
In Velox and Bromides. ’Tis also averred,
As a fact beyond doubt,
That they sometimes crop out
In the artists themselves, though of course that’s absurd.
Z is for Zest, which, unless you obtain,
You snapshot, develop, and gum-print in vain.
If there’s some to be had
In these rhymes, I am glad;
But if not, pray forgive me—'twon’t happen again.
J. B. Kerfoot