Amateur Photographer & Cinematographer (1933)

the amateur PHOTOGRAPHER m 60 CINEMATOGRAPHER EDIT?J MORTIMER INCORPORATING "THE NEW PHOTOGRAPHER" "FOCUS* consulting EDtTOR "TH E PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS'' &_ "PHOTOGRAPHY" R. CHILD BAYLEY WEDNESDAY, October 4TH, 1933. Subscription fades: United Kingdom I7/t-. Canada tfa. OlJ/er &untaes/9/6 'per ann., post five from tSeputf/stiers Dorset /fouse Stamford Street Condon 5 £ f Copyright — Registered as a Newspaper for transmission in the U.K. Hackneyed titles are not now so common as they were some years ago, but now and then one sees a title which has at one time or another served for hundreds of competition, exhibition and Press pictures. Each year, per¬ haps, it becomes more and more difficult to find an original title for a commonplace subject, but even when a hackneyed title is used care should be taken to see that it fits the subject and is not likely to call for facetious comment. Recently, when the corn harvest was coming to an end, one of the leading illus¬ trated London weeklies published a well-composed picture beneath which appeared the legend, “ The Last Load ” — one of the oldest and most hackneyed of titles for one of the commonest of subjects. In the picture a farm cart, heavily laden with com, was shown to be leaving a field, but in the field could be seen very clearly about fifty shocks of corn ready for carting ! The title was obviously incorrect and did not fit the subject, and the picture raised many a smile in a Cambridge¬ shire cornfield where it was handed round. One rustic wit, however, said the title may have been correct, as the carters might have been going on strike. The Photographic Cartoon. We have associated the name of Mr. H. G. Ponting with some magnificent Arctic photography, and it is remarkable to find him breaking out in a fresh place. But the cartoonists will have to look to their pencils if Mr. Ponting’s methods of photographic caricature are capable of good imitation. Here were states¬ men whose photographic portraits, by a little purely optical jugglery, became caricatures of the first TOPICS of the WEEK Putting the Clock Back. Summer Time ends October 8th. Vol. LXXVI. No. 2343. order, never, of course, losing the resemblance to the original, as a caricature never should. A film was even produced illustrating the permutations and combinations of which a single straight photograph is capable, the subject being shown lifting and lowering the nose, narrow¬ ing and widening the eyes, flapping the ears, diminishing the forehead and elongating the chin, or the reverse, and all done by kindness — in other words, without “ touching up,” everything being accomplished by an attachment on the front lens. The climax was reached when the photograph of one gentleman well known in the photographic world, Mr. Olaf Bloch, was taken, and a hundred different photographs pro¬ duced from it, all of them distorted in different ways, yet all of them recognisable to the sitter’s friends. Composite Portraiture. Ever on the alert for sensational copy, representatives of the lay Press did not fail to notice and fully describe a composite photographic portrait combining the characteris¬ tics of 152 Americans, exhibited at the Royal Institute Galleries in Piccadilly. Composite portraiture, however, is not so new as some of the scribes would have us believe it to be ; it has been known for many years, and the general principles of the process were laid down in a special article which appeared on page 278 of The Amateur Photo¬ grapher dated August 7th, 1885. Their origin is said to be due to a conversation between Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton about the year 1876, and Darwin also paid some attention to the subject in 1877. Although the idea of com¬ bining two or more portraits origi¬ nated in England, the process has 304 5