THE CAMERA 



247 



Cats and Cereus Photographs. 



Stamford, Connecticut. 

 To the Editor : 



Herewith please find two prints that 

 will possibly be of interest to the readers 

 of the "Camera" department, one show- 

 ing two kittens at play, the other the blos- 

 som of a night-blooming Cereus, neither 

 of which can be considered easy for the 

 young camerist. 



First we will take the cats. They were 

 about three months old and just full of 

 fun, a fact of which I took advantage. 

 Having first gained their confidence ( a 

 most important part of the proceeding), 

 for although cats are nervous they are 

 intelligent and soon recognize their 

 friends and foes, then begin to play with 

 them. But do not make the mistake of 

 putting them where you want them ; get 

 them there, yes, but do not put them there 

 as that excites their suspicion, and seeing 

 the camera, a strange object to them, 



prise upon her, a squeak or a peculiar 

 noise with the mouth will do. When she 

 turns her head press the bulb and you 

 have got pussy — perhaps. At any rate 

 that is how I did it. The cats were the 

 property of Mrs. Valley of Main Street, 

 Stamford, who is a great lover of ani- 

 mals. 



The night blooming Cereus, from which 

 this bloom was taken, is about twelve 

 years old and is the property of Mrs. 

 Robert Bunten, a nature lover if ever 

 there was one, of Mill River Street, Stam- 

 ford. It bore nine blossoms this year, 

 and this particular one kept all her friends 

 excited for several nights as it threatened 

 to bloom but did not. At last our pa- 

 tience was rewarded, and Mrs. Bunten 

 telephoned that the longed looked for 

 event was taking place. We hurried 

 over and saw one of nature's strangest 

 floral mysteries — a flower that blossoms 

 for a few hours only at night, and then 

 withers away. Although it was so beau- 



A REMARKABLY GOOD PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDY OF CATS. 



they simply jump down. Get everything 

 ready first, focus the table or other sup- 

 port on which you are going to place 

 them, the pattern of the table cloth will 

 enable you to see just where the focus is. 

 put in the plate holder, draw the slide, 

 and you are ready. Now you must get 

 pussy where you want her. A small piece 

 of paper on a string will be all that you 

 need. Put a chair by the table so that 

 she can jump from one to the other, draw 

 the paper over the chair and pussy will 

 jump on the chair ; draw it on to the table 

 and pussy will follow. It may be neces- 

 sary to do this two or three times then 

 when she is on the table let her capture 

 the paper, then spring some sort of a sur- 



tiful there was something sad about it, 

 for it seems strange that such a magni- 

 ficent flower should fade in so unaccoun- 

 table a way. As Mrs. Bunten was kind 

 enough to give the flower to my wife, we 

 hurried back to the studio and set to 

 work to get a negative of it before it be- 

 gan to fade, which, of course, as it was 

 one o'clock in the morning, had to be 

 made by flash light. 



The chief difficulty to overcome was 

 the characteristic harshness of all flash 

 light pictures of white subjects. This 

 was done by using a proschlite flash lamp 

 which has a storage chamber with a capa- 

 city of one hundred grains of magnesium, 

 so that any exposure up to ten seconds 



