"4 RECREATION. 
photo of herself holding the hand of her 
beau, and she is yours forever. 
3. Lhe more in the dark you keep prints 
until they pass the hypo., the stronger 
they are. Move prints about face down. 
Press down in the tray, with palm of hand 
to exclude air bubbles. Occasionally tilt 
tray and renew water; but do not handle, 
or expose to light. 
4. If your prints and negatives do not 
sell, as you see others sell, it is no doubt 
because you do not regard “the day of 
small things.” After you have taken and 
developed almost a perfect picture, it still 
requires exquisite attention to small things 
to make a marketable success of it. 
If you are going to have the camera 
craze, have it hard, and have some “meth- 
od in your madness.’ Speaking of pub- 
lishable pictures: I can’t see what merit 
fully half the pictures published go in on. 
They are so out of focus, even if the sub- 
ject be well chosen, that one is tempted 
to apostrophize them, “‘here’s to you Fuzzy 
Wuzzy!” It is dreadfully trying on the 
eyes. You natually try to establish the 
proper focus and can’t, and so strain your 
eyes more than you realize. 
5. Take care of your eyes. Photography 
is hard on them. You examine a view you 
have selected with intense vision. There 
is both nervous and optical strain in focus- 
img, and you narrow your vision down and 
watch like a hawk in developing. Then 
if you leave your dark room suddenly, on 
a bright day, it is almost all your eyes are 
worth. Don’t do it. Set your dark room 
door open and clean up in half light. Then 
take down your shutter, and leave the 
blind down till done. Better to waste a 
few even precious minutes than to per- 
manently strain your eyes. 
6. Here is a suggestion as to the de- 
veloper I had from a _ professional, 
that seems founded on the bed rock of com- 
mon sense. “Develop any make of plates 
with the formula sent out by their manu- 
facturer.”’ Why? 
Because when a man puts his fortune in 
a dry plate factory, he naturally employs 
expert chemists to compound a formula 
that will agree with his plate coating and 
produce the best possible results. 
7. Juggling with chemicals the other 
day, I decided to try a new formula, that 
was a twister. I took it to my chemist 
to fill. 
He read it over 3 times and then said in 
the smoothest, easiest tone possible, ““We 
have the water.” 
8. A photographic journal of recent 
date contains an article on ‘Naturalistic 
Photography,” by Prof. Emerson. It is 
a very learned article and stylish as a Paris 
frock. It is divided into sections and 
quarter sections, and embellished with Lat- 
in, and a sprinkling of French. The 
learned Professor with 4 initials and a 
hyphen is scared to death lest these ama- 
teurs who are taking prizes and selling pic~ 
tures may get the swell head and fancy 
they are artists. The meat of his article 
lies in the following extracts. “Having 
selected a good view, artists next have to 
paint or etch it. The photographer does 
not make his picture; a machine does it 
for him.” This is in italics, and type a 
half inch high by’ way of emphasis. 
“The fact that the photographer does 
not do the work is nearly always over- 
looked. He gets to talking so much of his 
work that he forgets that after all he has 
only set the machine to work, and he has 
no more done the work than the engineer 
that starts the locomotive, pulls the train. 
“Very little credit attaches to any photo- 
grapher, and such work can never reach 
any but a mediocre plane. It will never sat- 
isfy any genius, or any first rate intellect. 
You selected the view. That was art, (we 
allow you have an eye for the picturesque.’ 
You arranged it well (we think). That was 
art. Then you started a machine and the 
machine did the work for you. You mere- 
ly fixed its work by chemicals, which is 
photography, not art. You selected some 
ready prepared paper and the sun printed 
your picture for you and you fixed it again. 
“We find you have not proved you are 
an artist for you can execute nothing. 
We find that if you think photography to 
be art, you must decide who is the artist 
in the case of the automatic machine, the 
penny, the person, who drops it in the 
slot, or the machine. 
“Perhaps convinced by this inexorable 
logic, you say, ‘Yes I yield to reason, for 
only fools live in a fool’s Paradise.’ Pho- 
tography then, when not scientific or typo- 
graphical, is a pastime, dangerous in many 
respects as apt to foster morbid vanity ip 
the degenerate; but useful, often as lead 
ing its practitioners to visit picture gal= 
leries and think about art, thus helping 
them to cultivate an aesthetic sense. But 
the snares of vanity are too strong to be 
resisted by the weak, and the cheap press 
hurries them to their doom. It has been 
well said that the chief uses of cheap 
journals, is the increased facilities they of- 
fer for the discovery of fools; since in their 
columns alone, fools are allowed, to have 
their say. Certain it is that photographic 
papers have helped photographers to dis- 
cover many fools,” [he might add, like the 
darkey preacher, “of whom I am which,”] 
“who would otherwise have lain perdu; 
amateur writers on optical matters, art, 
science, and what not. We would suggest 
that the common fool in the future, hesi- 
tate, before discovering himself.” 
And an uncommon fool like the writer 
of the above should hesitate forever. What 
do you think of it? An article from a man 

