Amateur Photographer & Cinematographer (1933)

-u August 9th, 1933 photographic STYLE By S. E. WESTWOOD. A suggestion for picture -making when visiting a new locality. The Yarn Market, Dunster. objects of greatest interest at Dunster, and every visitor makes a point of going inside it to admire the cobbled floor, the fine old roof timbers, and the pretty latticed windows in the gables. But to how many does it occur to take a photograph from this aspect ? Probably not one in a hundred. Print number two was taken from such an aspect, and to judge from the curious glances of other visitors who were present at the time, I think that I myself From the interior of the Yarn Market. was regarded as a peculiar member of the photographic fraternity because of my departure from established practice. No special merit, photographically, is claimed for the second picture. It is merely introduced by way of an example of how photographs may be obtained which have some claim to distinctiveness. In this case the exception¬ ally strong contrasts between light and shade rendered it impossible to serve the interests of both faithfully in the same picture. In the enlargement, however, considerable detail is visible in the shadows, some of which may be lost in the reproduction, and the silhouette effect is not dis¬ pleasing. The use of one’s imagination and originality in this way, with a view to producing distinctive work, is intriguing, and adds a new interest to one’s hobby and the results obtained. Use your initiative to the utmost, therefore, and endeavour to cultivate a photographic style which at least will lift your work above the general level. THOSE readers who have studied for some time the art pages of this journal will doubtless have noticed that some of the photographs which appear therein can be immediately identified, even if no acknowledgment were given, as the products of particular workers. It is not so much a case of the subjects of the photographs being unusual — indeed, they are often quite ordinary ones, such as you and I can find — but the particular way in which the subjects have been treated results in characteristic and unique pictures which bear the stamp of the worker’s personality. In the same way as the author of a literary work is sometimes distinguishable by the style of the writing, so in these cases is the author of the photograph recognised by the style of the picture. It needs, perhaps, a spice of genius to produce work of such distinctive quality and style that its authorship is immediately recognisable ; but there is no reason why you should not succeed at least in making your pictures stand out from the ruck. Distinction in this sense merely implies that your photographs must be out-of-the-ordinary in some way, and there are various means of achieving this object. The subjects of the photographs, for instance, may be unusual ; the lighting may be particularly striking ; the posing of the figures (if any) may strike an original note ; or it may be quite simply a case of a novel viewpoint. It is perhaps by adopting the latter method that a begin¬ ning can best be made, and by way of an example two com¬ parative pictures are shown. The first print is a view of the village of Dunster, Somerset, with the picturesque seventeenth-century Yarn Market looming large in the middle distance. Watch the visitors to this beautiful old village in the summer-time. Almost without exception they adjust their cameras, take up their stand in practically the same spot, and obtain the same old view as that here reproduced. This stereotyped picture, and others like it, must appear in countless amateurs’ albums, and apart from the fact that it has the advantage of being a personal record, they and I might just as well have gone to the picture postcard shops, where the same view is obtainable by the dozen. No, we must exercise a little more originality if our photographs are to be distinctive. Well, now, the \ arn Market which figures in my first photograph is one of the The AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER ft 6 CINEMATOGRAPHER a 8 124