THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 149 
HINTS ON HOW TO SEE PICTURES IN NATURE. 
Read before the Photographic Section, November 25th, 1892. 
BY T. H. WILKINSON. 
As this paper is intended to be suggestive rather than ex- 
haustive, I shall entitle it, “‘ Hints on How to See Pictures in 
Nature.” Before entering upon the subject proper, allow me to say 
that I feel it an honor to have the opportunity of addressing you 
to-night, especially on a subject which is of the-greatest importance 
to me, and one which I hope will be of interest and profit to us all. ° 
I feel I am speaking to those endowed with the power of a full ap- 
preciation of the beautiful in nature, to those that are cultivating the 
mind and eye to see more clearly the wonderful forms that a Master 
Hand has shaped and set in order for the eye to dwell on and the 
heart to delight in. I know of nothing that will so comnletely arrest 
the senses, awaken the feelings, and expand the heart with love and 
gratitude, as a quiet contemplation of nature in some of her more 
pleasing aspects. Man is not only made to love and admire the 
works of nature, but he is gifted to some extent with the power to 
reproduce them. So soon as any of us become penetrated, nay over- 
whelmed, with the sentiment of a single natural beauty, how energetic 
are our actions and aspirations. We must see that spot once more. 
We want to feel that charm again. We long to revive the beauty 
that gave us so much joy and pleasure. 
We each takea different path. One expresses what he feels in 
music, another in a poem, the painter on his canvas, while you 
show us these beauties in your photographs. 
In speaking more directly to photographers to-night, many of 
my thoughts will be shorn of their full meaning, because I cannot 
picture my images in color, and must try to confine my paper to 
your immediate profession. I feel, however, that I am talking to 
gentlemen who are not engaged in what we might term ordinary 
photography, but rather to those who love nature, and in their 
leisure moments take up their camera and go out to the fields, to the 
stream, or to the mountain side, not only to enjoy its charms, but to 
bring back some tangible impression of what nature has provided. 
