12 PHOTOGRAPHING FLOWERS 



should then be placed for an hour or so. So treated, 

 they will fill up with water, and be then in fine condition 

 to stand handling and photographing. Even the most 

 delicate and shy wild flowers may be revived when quite 

 wilted if treated upon this plan, remembering, too, that 

 moving dry air will wilt them faster than anything else. 



If the flowers must be transported any distance before 

 photographing, be sure to have them wrapped in paraf- 

 fine paper, or packed in a tin box so that evaporation is 

 checked. They may wilt slightly from the confinement, 

 but when the .stems are cut off, the flowers placed in 

 lukewarm water and then stood for an hour, or even over 

 night, in a cool, dark place, away from moving air, they 

 will almost surely revive, and often improve. 



Let me say here that in some years of loving work with 

 flowers, I have never observed the so-called heliotropic 

 or sun-following movement during exposure. I have 

 been told that my flowers would turn toward the sun, and 

 that they would also expand during even a brief expo- 

 sure ; I have been gravely informed by one who posed as 

 an authority that the only time a flower could be photo- 

 graphed was within fifteen minutes after it had been cut, 

 the blossom then being in a state of shock, which would 

 keep it still ! But these and other theories have fallen 

 before the common sense of practice ; and the simple 

 plans above mentioned will enable anyone who loves 

 flowers to keep them and handle them in photographing. 

 Keep the hands off, though, .as much as possible ; the less 

 any flower is touched, the better it will "stand up." 



To return now to our carnations. Get for a start, and 

 for comfort, several white and several of a rather deep 

 pink, not red ; and if you can manage it, obtain some 

 unopened buds and some of the peculiar glaucous green 

 foliage. When they are filled up with water, as before 

 noted, arrange them in a vase. 



. Now it does not seem particularly diffi- 



rrangemen : ^^^^ ^^ arrange flowers agreeably in a • 

 ocusmg. vage Neither is it, for some people, with 

 some flowers, for some purposes. But here we are "up 

 against" our first technical difficulty. Get the arrange- 

 ment made, put the vase with its flowers on the table or 

 box placed to support it, put behind it the background 

 selected, and then focus the lens upon it. It will at once 

 be seen, .if in a strong enough light, that a sharp focus 

 cannot be obtained upon all the flowers, because, if there 

 are a dozen carnations with long stems in the vase, they 

 occupy a space, from back to front, of perhaps ten to fif- 

 teen inches. Of course, by stopping down the lens more 



