Amateur Photographer & Cinematographer (1937)

THE AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER cinematographer EDITOR F.J.MORTIMER INCORPORATING "THE NEW PHOTOGRAPHER* "FOCUS" "THE PHOTOGRAPHIC NEWS" "PHOTOGRAPHY" Subscription Rates : United Kingdom £i is. 8d., Canada £i is. 8d., Other Countries £i 3s. iod. per ann. post free from the publishers, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London, S.E.i. Telephone: Waterloo 3333. Telegrams : Amaphot, Sedist, London. WEDNESDAY, December 22nd, 1937. Copyright — Registered as a Newspaper for transmission in the U.K. HRISTMAS-TIME ! Time of parties, festivities, presents, exciting conspiracies, family reunions, and general jollification. What chances for the camera ! Chances, alas ! of which advantage is all too seldom taken. The amateur may rack his brains to compose ingenious pictures on holiday, or make attractive “ snaps ” of all the happy children he can find, in the search for the gaiety of the holiday spirit, yet photographically Christmas, which is a very “ high spot ” of picture-making possibilities, is frequently treated in a very casual manner or overlooked altogether by the photographer. Modern him speeds have brought indoor work within the reach of the most modest camera users, a fact that does not generally seem to be realised. It is not always necessary to have an f/1.9 lens to depict interiors. The tyro with a small -aperture lens and a Photoflood lamp can, with a little ingenuity, get pictures regarded as unobtainable only a few years ago. We hope that the articles on the subject in this and the preceding two or three issues of “ The A.P.” will help many of our readers to secure a good bag of indoor pictures this Christmas. Humour in Photography. We hear that the Pictorial Group of the R.P.S. is thinking of staging an exhibition of humorous photo¬ graphs. It will have to be very carefully done, and we should not be surprised if they lost heart in the middle of it. For they must not be merely comic photographs, which would be easy enough to procure. They must be photo¬ graphs which will suggest something of that delicate and elusive spirit which shines in the work of some of C(^he Editor wishes all Readers of “The A.P.” in every part of the world a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year. Yol. LXXXIV. No. 2563. our great artists with the pencil. Mr. G. Crosby, who lectured on the subject before the Group, said that he had gone out with the camera in search of humorous photographs, but he had been distressingly un¬ successful. We are not surprised, for humour comes not by searching. It bubbles up unexpectedly from a concealed well. A good many of the examples which Mr. Crosby and others brought forward we should not describe as humorous ; some of them were funny or grotesque ; others depended for any humour upon their caption, as do many of the drawings in Punch, and there the humour surely belongs not to the picture but to the words. The truth may be, as someone said in the discussion, that humour is an escape from reality, and therefore the straight convincing photograph is the worst possible medium for a humorous effect, because it is reality itself. Fakes. Rather cruelly and without com¬ plete justification, the word “ fake ” has attached itself to photography. It can be used of other things, various works of art, for example, but the first thing that people think of when the word “ fake ” is mentioned is some kind of photo¬ graphic manipulation to “ make what isn’t appear to be what is.” It must be admitted, of course, that photographic faking is ex¬ tremely easy ; that is an inevitable result of the facility of the photo¬ graphic process which in other connections brings about so much benefit. Nor can it be said that there is a rigid line which divides the justifiable from the unjustifiable in faking. There are some people who would exclaim against putting 690 9