HOW TO TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS
After he has bought or rented a typewriter, the would-be free lance in
the non-fiction field has his workshop only half equipped. One more
machine is an urgent necessity. Get a camera.
Few of our modern American newspapers and magazines are published
without pictures; so anybody ought to be able to perceive how absurd it
is to submit an unillustrated manuscript to an illustrated periodical.
Good photographs have won a market for many a manuscript that scarcely
would have been given a reading if it had arrived without interesting
pictures; and many a well-written article has been reluctantly returned
by the editor because no photographs were available to illustrate it.
There is only one way to dodge this issue. Just as you can hire a typist
to put your manuscript into legible form, you can pay a professional
photographer to accompany you wherever you go and take the illustrations
for your text. But the same vital objection holds here as in the case
of the professional typist--the costs will cut heavily into your
profits. With a little practice you can learn to do the work yourself.
After that, you can operate at a small fraction of the expense of hiring
a professional.
Your work soon enough will be of as high a quality as anything that the
average commercial photographer can produce, and, better yet, it will
not have any flat and stale commercial flavor about it. Nothing is more
static and banal than the composition that the ordinary professional
will produce if you fail to prevent him from having his own way. Ten to
one, all the lower half of the picture will be empty foreground, and not
a living creature will appear in the entire field of vision.
It cost the present writer upward of $150 to discover this fact. Then he
bought a thirty dollar postcard kodak and a five dollar tripod and told
the whole tribe of professionals to go to blazes. The only time since
then that he has ever had to hire commercial aid was when he had to have
heavy flashlights made of large rooms.
So save yourself money now, instead of eventually. Even if thirty
dollars takes your last nickel, don't hesitate. For a beginning, if you
are inexperienced in photography, rent a cheap machine with which to
practice--a simple "snapshot box" with no adjustments on it will do
while you are picking up the first inklings of how to compose a picture
and of how much light is required for different classes of subjects.
After you have practiced with this for a while, go out and buy a folding
kodak. If you have the journalistic eye for what is picturesque and
newsy the camera will quickly return 100 per cent. upon the investment.
The one great difficulty for the beginner in photography is that he does
not know how to "time" the exposure of a picture. The books on
photography are all too technical. They discuss chemicals and printing
papers and all the finer shadings of processes carried on in
laboratories under a ruby light. But what the novice longs to know is
simply how to _take_ pictures--what exposure to allow for a portrait,
what for a street scene, what for a panorama. He usually fails to give
the portrait enough light, and he gives the panorama too much. He is
willing to allow a professional finisher to do his developing and
printing. What the beginner wants to read is a chapter on exposure. As
an operator, he is seeking for a _rule of how_ and some examples of its
application.
If you lack a simple working theory, here is one now, in primer terms:
The closer the object which you wish to photograph is to your lens, the
_more_ light it requires; the farther away it is, the _less_ light it
requires.
This may sound somewhat unreasonable, but that is how a camera works. A
portrait head, or anything else that must be brought to within a few
feet of the lens, requires the greatest width of shutter aperture (or,
what comes to the same thing, the longest exposure); and a far-away
mountain peak or a cloud requires the smallest aperture (or the shortest
exposure).
To understand thoroughly what this means, take off the back of your
kodak and have a look at how the wheels go round. Set the pointer of the
time dial on the face of your camera at "T" (it means "time exposure")
and then press the bulb (or push the lever) which opens the shutter.
Looking through the back of your camera, make the light come through the
largest width of the lens. You can do this by pushing the other pointer
on the face of your kodak to the extreme left of its scale--the lowest
number indicated. On a kodak with a "U. S." scale this number is "4."
You will see now that the light is coming through a hole nearly an inch
in diameter. If it were a bright day you could take portrait heads
outdoors through this sized aperture with an exposure of one
twenty-fifth of a second.
Using this same amount of time, the size of the shutter aperture should
be reduced to a mere pin hole of light to make a proper exposure for
far-away mountain tops, clouds, or boats in the open sea.
Suppose we make our problem as simple as possible by leaving the timer
at one twenty-fifth of a second for all classes of subjects. We will
vary only the size of the hole through which the light is to enter.
For a close-up, a portrait head, we operate with the light coming
through the full width of the lens.
Now push to the right one notch the pointer which reduces the size of
the hole. This makes the light come through a smaller diameter, which on
a "U. S." scale will be marked "8." Only half as much light is coming
through now as before. This is the stop at which to take full length
figures and many other views in which the foreground is unusually
prominent. Buildings which are not light in color should also be taken
with this stop. In general, it is for heavy foregrounds.
Push the pointer on to "16." If your scale is "U. S." you will notice
that this is midway between the largest and the smallest stops. It is
the happy medium stop at which, on bright days, you can properly expose
for the great majority of your subjects, those hundreds of scenes not
close enough to the lens to be classified as "heavy foregrounds" nor yet
far enough away to be panoramas. Buildings which are light in color and
sunny street scenes fall into this division of exposures. When in doubt,
take it at one twenty-fifth of a second with stop "16." You can't miss
it far, one way or another.
Push the pointer on to "32" and the object to be photographed ought to
be at some distance away. This is the stop for the open road and the
sunlit fields--anything between an "average view" and a "panorama."
At "64" the scale is set for the most distant of land views, beach
scenes and boats in the middle distance off-shore. You will learn by
costly overexposures that water views require much less light than
landscapes. Photographers have an axiom that "water is as bright as the
sky itself." So at "64," which is proper exposure for the most distant
of land panoramas, you begin to take waterscapes.
That tiniest pin hole of a stop, at the extreme right of the scale, is
never to be used except for such subjects as the open sea and snowcapped
mountain tops.
There you have the theory. Apply it with common sense and you will meet
with few failures. You scarcely need to be cautioned that if an object
is dark in color it will require proportionately more exposure than the
same object if it is white. Through various weathers and seasons,
experience will keep teaching you how to adapt the rule to changing
conditions of light. Certain handbooks and exposure meters will be of
service while you are learning the classifications of subjects.
You have been told how the rule works. Press the "T" bulb again to click
your shutter shut and prepare to set out on a picture taking excursion.
Set the time scale at one twenty-fifth of a second, and leave it there.
Load up a film. Replace the back of the camera. Take along a tripod.
Don't forget that tripod! With that you insure yourself against getting
your composition askew, or losing a good picture on account of a shaky
hand.
Suppose the expedition is gunning somewhere in the backwoods. Down the
stony winding road saunters one of the natives in a two-piece suit.
Overalls and a hickory shirt constitute his entire outfit. He grows a
beard to save himself the labor of shaving. His leathery feet scarcely
feel the sharp stones of the highway. Here is a picture worth
preserving, for the "cracker" type is becoming a rarity, almost extinct.
Set your pointer at "8" and take his full length. If you wish a close-up
of his head, set the pointer at "4."
A little farther and the road plunges into a shady valley. Under the
trees ahead is a log cabin, dappled with the sunlight and the shade of
dancing leaves. Use your judgment about whether such a scene requires
"8" or "4." If in doubt, use "4," for the danger here is that you may
under-expose.
In a clearing where the shade of the trees has little effect, stands an
old water power mill. It is simply an "average view," and you can safely
snap it with a "16" stop.
The friendly razorback hogs under the mail hack make a picture with a
heavy foreground. They fall into the "8" classification--half in shade,
half in sunlight.
The road leads us at last to a river. An old-fashioned ferry boat is
making a crossing in midstream. From the hilltop where we first survey
it the scene is a landscape, distant view, and can be taken with a "32."
But when you get down to the water's edge and shoot across the shining
river, beware of overexposure. Stop down another notch.
Do you see now how the theory works? Give it a fair trial and you will
agree that taking pictures--the mere _taking_, with no bothering your
head about developing, printing, toning and the like--is a matter no
more baffling than the simple art of learning to punch the letters on
the keyboard of a typewriter. Keep at it, never neglecting an
opportunity to practice. Keep experimenting, until you can fare forth in
any sort of weather and know that you will be able to bring back
something printable upon your film or plate. If the day is not bright,
shove your timer over to one-tenth of a second, or to one-fifth.
Certain experts in photography will bitterly deride this advice to keep
the time set at one twenty-fifth of a second and to vary nothing but the
size of the lens aperture. They will point out--and be quite right about
it--that the smaller the aperture the sharper the image, and that a more
professional method of procedure is to vary the timing so as to take all
pictures with small stops.
To which I can only answer that this is all well enough for the trained
photographer and that in these days of my semi-professionalism I
practice that same sort of thing myself. But in the beginning I was duly
grateful to the man who gave me the golden maxim of "the closer the
object, the larger the stop; the more distant the object, the smaller
the stop"--a piece of advice which enabled a novice, with only one
simple adjustment to worry about, to take a passably sharp, properly
exposed picture. So I pass the word along to you for whatever it may be
worth.