140 



The National Geographic Magazine 



One of the most important lines of in- 

 vestigation being conducted by the ex- 

 perts of the fuel-testing plant is the study 

 •of coal mines throughout the country to 

 determine, where certain portions of the 

 "bed are being discarded, if it is not pos- 

 sible to utilize the discarded portion for 

 power or other purposes. At the present 

 time gas-producer tests are being made 

 ■on ''bone" coal containing from 45 per 

 cent of ash upward. So far no difficulty 

 has been encountered in running the pro- 



ducer plant on this material. This "bone' 

 coal has always been looked upon by the 

 miners as a waste product, and is being 

 mined and discarded in many localities, 

 notably the Hocking Valley region in 

 Ohio. ' 



The old dumps are available as well as 

 the "bone" which is in place in the mines, 

 and should the experiments now being 

 conducted at the fuel-testing plant prove 

 entirely successful, there should be a mar- 

 ket for thi«^ material. 



POLAR PHOTOGRAPHY 



By Anthony Fiala 



i,eader of the zlegler polar expedition, i903-i905, and author of 

 "Fighting the Polar Ice" 



THE sun shines day and night 

 through the short Arctic sum- 

 mer, revolving like the hour 

 hand of a great clock in the dome of the 

 sky not far above the circle of the hori- 

 zon. With the blazing luminary and the 

 vast white stretches of snow and ice, 

 there ought to be no lack of light — a 

 veritable paradise for the photographer. 



At first sight it would seem that with 

 all this dazzling brilliancy over-exposure 

 would be the evil to guard against, and 

 that comparatively small openings and 

 quick speeds would be the rule for lenses 

 and shutters. But no ! Though the 

 Arctic explorer may travel in danger of 

 snow-blindness in a flood of light, direct 

 and reflected, he soon finds that the 

 actinic value of sunlight is less than in 

 lower latitudes — in fact, surprisingly 

 little — and he is obliged to use his very 

 quickest lenses, and then with their 

 widest openings use the slowest speed 

 ■consistent with the movement of the men 

 and animals which he photographs on the 

 crystal fields. 



On my first Arctic expedition I took 

 ■color screens, but only used them or 

 tried to use them a few times. I soon 

 found that, instead of giving color and 



character to the views, they flattened 

 and deadened the pictures of ice and 

 snow and lengthened the exposure to 

 hopelessly long intervals of time. The 

 reason for this is the low altitude of the 

 sun and the consequent high refraction, 

 which gives more of the yellow and red 

 rays than of the blues, as is the case with 

 an evening sun in our own latitude. 



With so much reflected light, the pic- 

 tures would sufi^er for want of shadows, 

 and I soon found that to get good values 

 in ice pictures it was necessary to photo- 

 graph with the sun in such a position 

 that the long shadows cast between the 

 ice blocks by the low orb could be used 

 to accentuate the high lights and give 

 character and contrast. To that end, it 

 was necessary to have the sun either at 

 the right or left hand, and often I ex- 

 posed a film pointing the lens directly 

 at the sun. 



The artist who attempts to photograph 

 the ice-fields after the time-honored cus- 

 tom of always having the sun behind his 

 back will generally be doomed to flat, in- 

 sipid negatives and almost meaningless 

 pictures unless he can find shadows 

 enough in the foreground to give char- 

 acter to the view. 



