i6 PHOTOGRAPHING FLOWERS 



With these points decided, the focus 

 Exposure, obtained, the proper stop set (and it will 

 usually be found necessary to work with 

 a rather small opening, sayy/30 or 7742), the exposure 

 must be decided upon. Those accustomed to the use of 

 an exposure meter will, of course, take its guidance, 

 though the necessity for avoiding any loss of time will 

 suggest the simplest means and the promptest action. A 

 plan which has been found very satisfactory in practice 

 and which has the advantage of cultivating and disciplin- 

 ing one's judgment, is to adopt what may be called an 

 exposure /actor, anij to calculate from this what exposure 

 to give. For instance, on this carnation subject, we may 

 have a light which by experiment has been found suffi- 

 cient to give a fully exposed portrait negative, with a fast 

 plate and a wide-open lens, in say three seconds. Now 

 the lens is stopped down to 773° — that is i5 times the 

 exposure ; also, we have possibly cut off some of the 

 light to gain softness, and we are working with say a 

 Cramer Instantaneous Iso chromatic plate, which is 25 

 per cent slower than the fastest. For the last two items 

 we add another second to the basis, and decide the 

 exposure as 4X16 = 64 seconds. Both prudence and 

 experience dictate a little for leeway, and we give an 

 exposure of 75 seconds, remaining absolutely still during 

 this time, to avoid shaking the flowers. 



The development, at least at first, should follow 

 immediately, if at all possible, as in no other way can 

 experience be obtained so quickly and cheaply. Having 

 made a full note of all the circumstances — name of 

 flower, lens, stop, plate, time of day, character of light 

 (whether bright sun, hazy sun, cloudy bright or cloudy 

 dull outside), and length of exposure, we take our 

 holder to the dark-room, and, carefully dusting the plate, 

 pour on it the selected developer. 



For flower photographs, delicacy is more often wanted 

 than brilliancy, and hence the developer should be one 

 which will not give a "hard" negative. It is presumed 

 that the worker has had some previous experience, and 

 has control of his developer, so that he will know when 

 to stop or when to push. We have white carnations and 

 pink ones ; we must not have both come up equally 

 strong as to density. The foliage should not be too 

 much accentuated ; if flowers and foliage are alike, 

 over-exposure is plainly indicated. The "Universal" 

 developer described on page 11 I find satisfactory. 



The carnation composition, will doubtless keep in order 

 for another exposure, in which the faults of the first 



