Alfred Horsley Hinton: Use

“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

“The different degree of light interference between blue and red also affords a power which we may be glad to avail ourselves, in some cases using the red where a very marked degree of lightening is desired, or blue where only a trifling difference is needed.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, Fidelity to nature and justifiable untruth, p. 21

Light

“Probably every portrait photographer resorts to some such "dodge" for making a face lighter or other similar purpose, and he finds that the application of water-color paint in ever so thin a wash makes so much difference to the printing density that blue is commonly used as being a quick printing color, the effect of which is therefore not so great; an equally dense layer of blue and of red to any portion of a negative would print very differently, the red shutting off the light action much more powerfully than the blue.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, Fidelity to nature and justifiable untruth, p. 20

Color , Light , Water , Painting

“With most of us, even without special training, there is a certain instinctive sense of proportion, and thus we recognize the relative distance of objects by their relative size.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, The use of the lens in pictorial work, p. 51

Sense , Training

“As a general rule, therefore, the lights and shadows of clouds near the horizon are less vivid than in clouds higher up. Exceptions to this rough rule will be found when the source of light is near the horizon, as in sunset and sunrise, also when there is a gathering of local stormclouds which may hover over the distance as a dark pall, when there is fair weather and light, transparent clouds near to us.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Perspective of clouds, p. 100

Light , Weather

“The objection to the shiny, highly polished surface of albumen and gelatine papers is that, besides the fact that the surface reflects false and disturbing lights, the very polish and gloss has an artificial appearance which, from its very superfine character, irresistibly reminds us of its origin and nature.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing methods and their bearing on pictorial photography, p. 71

Nature , Light , Appearance , Falseness

“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

“Inferior as a mechanical printing method for ordinary photographic purposes, the gum process may for a time at least be regarded as standing apart for pictorial purposes, because the large amount of personal control which must be exercised before it can be said to show distinct advantages over other methods implies that the controlling hand must be guided by an artist that is, a man of such large instinctive artistic taste that one can hardly conceive that he would be able to produce a better result by painting, and without the use of photography at all, were he to devote the same skill and endeavour to the employment of brush or pencil, instead of photographic appliances.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing methods and their bearing on pictorial photography, p. 73

Exercises , Time , Painting , Personality

“Should any of my readers have failed to get useful cloud negatives, and are close upon giving up in despair, as I have known many to be, I would recommend them to forthwith take a slow plate, insert F 45 stop in the lens, and make a quick shutter exposure on some wellmarked sun -lit clouds. Then develop with a slightly diluted developer, and see what comes of it. Probably, if the clouds be heavy, they will be a little under-exposed. Then, from this as a basis it should not be difficult to get on the right road.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Clouds. Their use, and practical instructions as to how to photography them, p. 93

Sun , Despair

“We are then brought to consider Platinotype, which, on the whole, may be regarded as the most suitable for general pictorial work. Its power of rendering relative tones and atmosphere is perhaps unequalled, whilst, although every one who has used it has sometimes wished that the undeveloped image were more visible, yet the pale, ghost-like print made by the light is very much better than nothing at all, and, indeed, may often be quite sufficient to guide us in our endeavours to control the action of light in a manner to be shortly described.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing methods and their bearing on pictorial photography, p. 72

Light

“It is often difficult and well-nigh impossible, when using the lens, to get all planes in moderate focus without getting one or some part excessively so, and similarly, if we avoid excessive sharpness in each and every part, some planes, such as the extreme distance or immediate foreground, so broken up as to destroy form and structure. Then it is that the pin-hole, with its equal focus in all planes and at any focal length, seems to recommend itself; but if it be desired to emphasize any object, by introducing more detail there than elsewhere, then the uniform sharpness of the pin-hole image fails us.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

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

Parting

“But the quality of the result obtained by using a pin-hole to which its advocates attach most importance is the suppression of sharp focus over the whole image, no one plane being more sharply focused than another.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Pin-hole as a substitute for the lens, p. 61

“I have sometimes felt that writers on the artistic aspect of photography have too often, like the reformers of religious creeds, led their followers into a condition of disbelief and unrest, and then left them to find out for themselves how to live up to new and vague beliefs, so many writers on Pictorial Photography have told us what to avoid without saying why, and have then told us what to do without showing how.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, p. 2

“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

“In selecting our subject then we have two things to consider. First, is it as good as the conditions will let it be - that is, have we chosen the point of view which, with the present conditions, shows at its best pictorially, and secondly, if taken from this point now, are the alterations we would like, weather or light, to make for us of such a kind that we can introduce them for ourselves when printing, and, if so, what are those alterations.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Part II : Practical Pictorial Photography, Some practical suggestions on the selection of the subject and a note on the subject of motive

Light , Weather

“…let it be remembered that as photography is our chosen medium, then if photography unaided will give us the effect we want there is no especial virtue in altering it.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 79