AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. 



HOW WE PHOTOGRAPHK1) THE BABY. 



The photographer fastened the baby in 

 a suspicious looking mechanism which he 

 averred would hold the baby comfortably, 

 and at the same time be invisible. I could 

 not help thinking what an admirable wife 

 and mother such a machine would make. 

 Then he stepped back and looked inside the 

 camera to see if its insides were all right. 

 Failing to discover a fit of indigestion or 

 other weakness in the machine he shook 

 himself free from the mantle of cloth, 

 stepped to one side, raa his fingers through 

 his hair, grabbed the rubber vermiform ap- 

 pendix, that opens the eye of the instru- 

 ment, and remarked, in a weary sort of a 

 way, as though he anticipated a struggle: 

 " Now look pleasant, please." 



I gazed at him pityingly. No need to ask 

 that man whether he was married, and the 

 father of children. 



" You don't suppose that baby under- 

 stands such language as that, do you? " said 

 my wife, witheringly. 



" I always thought I spoke fairly good 

 English," the photographer answered. 

 " However, perhaps the baby will under- 

 stand you better." 



" Well, I should hope so," answered the 

 little lady. Then she smiled on her infant 

 and said: " Didn't its cutesy wootsey litley 

 bitsey soulsum woulsum want to smilesy 

 wilesy sumsum wumsum for its momsum 

 womsum? " 



Our heir apparent gave one look of dis- 

 gust, curled the Northeast corner of her 

 mouth up into her Southwest ear, closed 

 her eyes, turned red and yelled bloody mur- 

 der in choicest baby talk. 



" Doesn't seem to work any better than 

 mine, does it? " said the photographer, 

 with a sneer. 



" Humph! " ejaculated the little lady. 

 " She's afraid of you — and no wonder! " 



Then the photographer tried again. He 

 put a pet cat on top of the camera and a 

 canary bird on the chair beside it. Then he 

 stirred up a sleepy monkey that reposed in 

 a corner, wound up a mechanical bug and 

 started it across the floor, tooted on a tin 

 horn, beat a toy drum and danced a jig. 

 No use. The baby simply looked more dis- 

 gusted still, and yelled the louder. 



Then the little lady sang a song, but with-" 

 out effect. Perceiving that a variety show 

 was in order I did a turn then, and rendered 

 my inimitable imitation of a man trying to 

 recite a poem. Then the photographer per- 

 formed some clever juggling tricks, the 

 most wonderful of which was extracting 3 

 dollars, on account, from my own pocket. 

 I had hoped to get the photographs 

 charged: but this did not work. The little 

 lady followed with " Curfew Shall Not 



Ring To-night." On this I made an im- 

 promptu parody entitled " Baby Will Not 

 Smile To-day," and then the little lady 

 suggested that we give her the legitimate. 

 We did. First we gave the dagger scene 

 from " Macbeth," then the sword scene 

 from " Richard III." We closed with An- 

 tony's oration, with the little lady as An- 

 tony, myself as the populace, and the pho- 

 tographer as the corpse. He said he felt 

 like one. The baby " lent us her ears " all 

 right, but look pleasant she would not. 

 Every alternative having failed, I at length 

 turned to what I call my " last resort." I 

 got down on my hands and knees and let 

 the youngster toy with my hair and mus- 

 tache. Then she smiled. 



Our friends say it is a splendid picture 

 of the baby, but an awfully poor one of me. 

 — T. Winthrop in Truth. 



THE RAY FILTER. 



The following interview with Mr. Pirie 

 MacDonald which recently appeared in the 

 Albany, New York, Argus, should set 

 every photographer thinking, coming as it 

 does from a man who is so thoroughly in 

 touch with every advance in photographic 

 matters. 



" What is, to your mind, the most inter- 

 esting topic of the day? I mean in relation 

 to the amateur." 



Please don't make that distinction. 

 When it is a question of interesting topics, 

 the amateur and professional should be 

 equally interested in everything photo- 

 graphic: and they are. It seems to me 

 that ortho-chromatic photography is the 

 most interesting problem we have ever had 

 to tackle; and to-day it is being worked 

 on to a greater or less extent by all photog- 

 raphers, high and low, amateur and pro- 

 fessional. You know, of course, that in the 

 ordinary dry plate the blue and violet rays 

 have a proportionately greater actinic than 

 those from the other end of the spectrum, 

 the greens, yellows and reds. Actinism is 

 defined, by Webster, as a property in the 

 solar rays which produces chemical 

 changes, as in photography. When an ex- 

 posure is made on a subject having a great 

 range of colors, such as, for example, the 

 ordinary landscape, the blues in the sky are 

 exposed so rapidly, that they are overdone, 

 when sufficient exposure is given to get the 

 detail in the greens and yellows. 



The ortho or iso-chromatic plates (from 

 the Greek ortho — meaning right, and iso — 

 meaning equal and chromatic color), is 

 particularly sensitive to orange (yellow and 

 red), and exposes them more rapidly than 

 the plain plate; thereby giving the blues 



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