AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. 75 
of education and position, abounding in 
such expressions as “fools” repeatedly 
99 
used: the ‘‘cheap press,” “degenerates, 
“the snares of vanity,” “hurries them to 
their doom,” “morbid vanity,” and the rest. 
I have met amateur photographers by the 
hundred, and there was not a fool, com- 
mon or uncommon, in the lot. There is 
an understanding among them that making 
a successful picture, and taking a success- 
ful picture are 2 different things. 
I never met an amateur who was even 
remotely contaminated with the idea that 
he was an artist. We amateurs understand 
that we are working with machines, and 
magnificent little machines they are. Most 
of us have come to love them, for what we 
can do with them, and what we can make 
them do for us. And while we do not 
dream of considering ourselves artists, we 
feel, and with reason, that there is much 
art in the handling of a camera, the select- 
ing of material for a picture, the timing 
of it, the developing of negatives, and 
the toning and mounting of our work—I 
mean the camera work! 
I don’t know how it feels to take a 
prize. I have never taken one. I have 
-sold negatives and like our Admiral Dewey 
after Manila, I could “wear the same hat 
I wore before.’ When I sold my first 
article, I did not float along above the 
walk. I had to foot it every step of the 
way home. Neither did the side walk curl 
up and roll along after me. I watched 
about that, in particular. 
Amateurs take their successes cooly, and 
hustle the professionals to equal their 
work. 
Considering the juicy richness of his 
vocabulary I hope Mr. Emerson ,will never 
fall foul of me. I feel annihilated to think 
of it. I have $5 up with a friend that if he 
ever sees this article he will say I am 
just the person he was talking about. Yet. 
I don’t feel a “fool” or a “degenerate” 
“mediocre” or “of second rate intellect,” 
or in a “dangerous pastime,’ when I do 
my best to make a perfect picture, and sell 
the negative for a good price. 
I don’t feel that I am being “hurried to 
my doom” or “entrapped in the snares of 
vanity,” and I wonder if thousands of my 
amateur friends do. 
Possibly I haven’t a realizing sense, and 
I hope I never shall have if it is going 
to lead me to burst on the unsuspecting 
public with an article of the Emerson 
stripe. Sounds for the world like an old 
fashioned hard shell Baptist sermon. 
9. Spring is a good time of year to var- 
nish your winter negatives. Lay a sheet of 
tissue paper between, and pack away in 
your empty plate boxes. Paste a sheet 
of paper on the lid and on it write the 
name and number of the negative. It won’t 
take a half day and will save a lot of tem- 
per and wear on the negatives. 
10. It is probably none of my business, 
but it provokes me to verge of remon- 
strance to see a camera abused. They are 
delicately constructed on purpose, which 
makes them susceptible to weather; and 
they are expensive, withal. I love mine 
like a living thing, and if I had 2 I should 
widen the sphere of my affections. 
Handle your camera carefully. Keep it 
dusted. Clean the lens with old linen. Get 
sufficient oilcloth to cover it, if you have 
not a carrying case or a rubber focusing 
cloth. ; 
I used my first camera 9 months over the 
cil field, up and down the river, through 
the woods, one summer’s outing in Mich- 
igan, and sold it, good as new, to help 
buy a larger one, within for 75 cents of its 
original cost. Keep your camera in a 
cool, dry place. 
Don’t roast it over gas. If you have :t 
in a warm room, and want to use it out 
doors in winter, put it in the hall first, 
open the door and cool it off gradually. 
If you rush out at once you must expect 
to have a frost over your lens that will 
make you think your plate is fogged, or 
worse still, a lens checked and ruined. 
When I see a camera pounded about, 
slung in the corner, or given over to the 
baby, I feel my ire rising. If you can’t 
appreciate the delicate little machine your- 
self, give it to some one who can. There 
are hundreds just aching for cameras and 
who can’t afford them. Don’t use your 
camera to crack walnuts with, just be- 
cause you can. When I get time I am go- 
ing to invent a camera myself. It is going 
to be a breech loader, with plenty of pow- 
der in the load, so that like the gun of 
Ortheris, it can “cry loud, poor darlin’ be- 
in’ misbehandled.”’ 
11. Now is the time to make spring 
flower pictures. If possible get the at- 
tachment some camera makers send out for 
enlarging small objects, for this work. 
Dont photograph a mass of anything. One 
3, 5 or 7 is the artistic law for arrang- 
ment. 
Select a few rare specimens, and arrange 
carelessly. If they won’t hold up run 
florists’ wire up the stems, to stiffen them, 
and use a light creme, tan or gray back- 
ground, well back, and add your leaves 
judgmatically. Cut the picture off above 
the vase, block of cork or whatever you 
use to hold them up. Light carefully, time 
and develop fully, and if you are not proud 
of your picture you have not done right. 
And material! Think of the wild flowers 
and their delicate serrated leaves! Thisties 
are pretty. So are milk weed and dande- 
lion. Of the latter use a bud, a bloom, 
a dried up head, several seed pods, and 
2 or 3 leaves. These, properly wired, make 

