56 DECORATIVE 



The suggestions given on earlier pages will assist 

 the worker who is desirous of pursuing this subject 

 in the matters of technique and of apparatus, and 

 will guide him past some of the difficulties that might 

 otherwise discourage him. 



In passing from the questions of ap- 

 '■w ^k° paratus, special methods and desirable 

 previous experience, it may be in place 

 to say that while this work of decorative photographic 

 design composition may be pursued anywhere that light 

 conditions will permit, a cool, well-lighted north room, 

 with, if possible, light from either east or wefSt to sup- 

 plement and qualify the north light, will be most ser- 

 viceable. In a cool room, leaves and flowers will 

 longer retain their freshness. I have seen the very best 

 efforts fail in a city top-floor skylight studio, with a sum- 

 mer temperature requiring three figures of Fahrenheit's 

 scale to express ! Indeed, it is only telling the bare 

 truth to say that the elusive, delusive, fascinating and 

 expensive " three-color " process, as used commercially, 

 would be far more practicable for natural objects than 

 for anything else, if the regulation studio where the 

 ignis fatuus is pursued was not, almost invariably, a 

 combination of the temperature of a furnace with the . 

 fumes of a chemical factory. Once upon a time, with 

 everything of skill, experience and apparatus otherwise 

 favorable, I saw carnations of full freshness fairly melt 

 in the fearful atmosphere of heat and collodion fumes 

 before they could even be focused upon. 



As a contrast, I remember one July day, with an 

 average temperature of 98° in the shade, on which I 

 successfully photographed, in full size, the very delicate 

 flowers of the Japanese iris ; but I worked in a cellar, 

 just under the open doors, the difference of nearly 

 twenty degrees in temperature meaning life for the 

 flowers, comfort for the worker, and results worth while. 

 But preliminaries of photographic 

 Book Covers technique hinted at, let us take up a 

 concrete subject. Nothing, it seems to 

 me, presents a better opportunity for photographic de- 

 sign than a book cover. Under modern publishing 

 conditions, few books, save those for technical or 



