DOI article:
Frederick H. [Henry] Evans, Personality in Photography—With a Word on Color
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31039#0056
A manually made transcription or edition is also available for this page. Please change to the tab "transrciption" or "edition."
It is here also that the wonderful new color methods will prove so ex-
hilarating and successful or so disastrously disappointing. So few are artists
in color; the love of the reticent, refined, and pure in color is so rare among
us. And the fact that photographers have been, necessarily, training them-
selves in black-and-white and all its subtleties, and therefore neglecting the
study of color, may compel most of them to very dreadful failures; and fail-
ure in this color direction will be more painful than failure in black-and-white.
The sense of values in color is a rare one, even among painters, with whom
it is a daily professional study; it is but rarely we can say, so-and-so is a
great colorist.
The photographer who aims at this color work must study his methods
afresh from the beginning, it is a new education he needs on quite different lines.
The rules for exposure will need readjusting and formulating; it is one
thing to expose for color with a view to an all-round successful translation
into monochrome, and quite another thing to render in color the pure
color values of nature. I forsee endless difficulties and failures, but the
failures will only make the successes the more entrancing; though, alas! to
those who are imperfect in their color sense and training, the sense of failure
will not be apparent; what they get will be so novel and exciting as to make
it difficult to regard it with cold criticality. But to the lover of pure color
the difficulties will be only so many incitements towards the achievement of
perfection.
And if we can hope to go as far with it as photography already has
gone in black-and-white, what a “feast of fat thing” may be looked for!
Frederick H. Evans.
38
hilarating and successful or so disastrously disappointing. So few are artists
in color; the love of the reticent, refined, and pure in color is so rare among
us. And the fact that photographers have been, necessarily, training them-
selves in black-and-white and all its subtleties, and therefore neglecting the
study of color, may compel most of them to very dreadful failures; and fail-
ure in this color direction will be more painful than failure in black-and-white.
The sense of values in color is a rare one, even among painters, with whom
it is a daily professional study; it is but rarely we can say, so-and-so is a
great colorist.
The photographer who aims at this color work must study his methods
afresh from the beginning, it is a new education he needs on quite different lines.
The rules for exposure will need readjusting and formulating; it is one
thing to expose for color with a view to an all-round successful translation
into monochrome, and quite another thing to render in color the pure
color values of nature. I forsee endless difficulties and failures, but the
failures will only make the successes the more entrancing; though, alas! to
those who are imperfect in their color sense and training, the sense of failure
will not be apparent; what they get will be so novel and exciting as to make
it difficult to regard it with cold criticality. But to the lover of pure color
the difficulties will be only so many incitements towards the achievement of
perfection.
And if we can hope to go as far with it as photography already has
gone in black-and-white, what a “feast of fat thing” may be looked for!
Frederick H. Evans.
38
