Alfred Horsley Hinton: Picture

“The prettiest or most interesting prospect may lack the conditions which awaken our emotions, and, lacking the essentials of the picture, must be passed by.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, How expression may be given to a picture, p. 33

“… to put it into slightly different form, it is not the facts in nature that the good picture aims at portraying, but the effects of light and shade accompanied by a pleasing arrangement.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, How expression may be given to a picture, p. 34

Nature , Light

“A good negative is one thing, but a negative that will enable us to get a good picture is another.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Development of negatives, p. 106

“…skies and clouds were still regarded as something quite apart from the rest of the picture, and, indeed, are still so regarded by the less advanced.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Clouds. Their use, and practical instructions as to how to photography them, p. 92

“Size, the mere number of square inches, of a picture, counts for nothing. A small picture may be quite as satisfying as a large; for remember that, as compared with the size of the mountain itself, the difference between a picture of it, thirty inches long, and one of six inches, is less than trifling.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Development of negatives, p. 108

Mountain

“It must be remembered that after all in making a picture we are endeavoring to set down on one plane various objects in such a way as to suggest an infinitude of varying planes, and hence we are justified in selecting such conditions of nature as shall help us to give the impression of truthfulness, even though it be not in particular cases absolutely true to fact.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Tone and atmoshphere, p. 46

Truth , Way , Nature , Help

“The sky is as much an essential part of the picture as any other part of it, and indeed, in very many instances, constitutes the key-note and important feature of the whole idea.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Clouds. Their use, and practical instructions as to how to photography them, p. 92

Idea , Parting

“In such a picture the artist may depart from actual fact, from what actually was, so long as he does not exceed what might have been.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 78

“The chief characteristic of the pin-hole photograph is that we get a general suppression of focus in all parts the picture is nowhere quite sharp.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Pin-hole as a substitute for the lens, p. 60

Parting

“The louder a sound is, the more we recognize it as being near, so the louder the "tone" of objects that is, the blacker or whiter the nearer they seem; and so if in our picture we wish to give a sense of distance, we must see that the darkest shadows and highest lights are in the foreground : and because we may not be able to materially alter things as the undiscriminating process gives them to us, we must seek for and select those scenes, those subjects, in which this arrangement of highest and deepest tones do come in the foreground, and then take care that our process renders them with fidelity, so that we may not lose the sense of their nearness or the feeling of greater distance of other planes which it is intended they shall give.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Tone and atmoshphere, p. 44-45

Feeling , Sense , Light

“…the purpose of a picture is not veracity to fact so much as truthfulness to idea; that is to say, it is not a question of what eye sees nor even what the brain imagines, but it is a question of what kind of production best awakens in the mind of the beholder the ideas which the maker of the picture desires him to receive.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, The consideration of some examples of sharp and suppressed definition, p. 37

Truth , Imagination , Idea , Question

“…to be able to say of a representation that it is "exactly like Nature " is by no means equivalent to saying that it is a fine picture.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, Fidelity to nature and justifiable untruth, p. 3

Nature

“The moment the eye perceives that the picture is produced by other than the professed means, the effect, the appeal to the imagination, is disturbed.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 90

Imagination

“A picture whether or not it is really true to fact must above all things appear true.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, Clouds in their relation to the landscape, p. 29

Appearance

“…he (a photographer) forgets that unless he has learnt when the tones of a picture are right or not, he will not know whether his work is good or bad, nor know what to try and overcome in future.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, The photographic print, p. 36

Future , Forgetting

“…the strongest part of a picture is the sensation and the feeling which it creates, this being done through the agency of certain familiar objects more or less accurately depicted and represented with more or less completeness.
The MOTIVE, then, in all pictorial work is to convey some thought or idea or sensation by means of a chosen subject.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, The application of the foregoing principles, p. 12

Feeling , Motivation , Idea , Parting

“If we are to select our subjects or arrange our groups with a pictorial motive we must absolutely and entirely sacrifice every other consideration, and be prepared to cut out of our composition the prettiest and most interesting item, if by so doing composition pure and simple is improved. And if some subject you are attached to will not admit of composition or will not admit of your treating it pictorially, then photograph it if you wish, but never suppose that it will form a picture.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Methods - The practical application of means to end, p. 29

Motivation