490 
many are no doubt disappointed dat not 
finding their names in the column of prize 
winners, yet I trust there may be no dis- 
satisfaction. While you may imagine your 
picture is better than some that have been 
placed above it, the judges were, as I have 
said, honest and conscientious in placing 
the awards as they did. That you have not 
succeeded in this instance should not dis- 
courage you. On the contrary it should 
stimulate you to greater efforts next year. 
The first 8 of the prize winners are pub- 
lished in this issue of RECREATION, and the 
others, together with those highly com- 
mended, will follow in future issues. 
RECREATION’S 5th annual competition 
will open April Ist, 1900, and every reader 
of this magazine who uses a camera should 
begin now to study and to work with a 
view to turning out a better and a more 
novel picture for that contest than has ever 
yet been made. 
CAMERA NOTES. 
GENE S. PORTER. 
My faith in amateur photographers has 
has been rudely shaken. Because I study 
and work all my might to produce good 
pictures, I had supposed other amateurs 
were doing the same; and I have offered 
my might by way of help and encourage- 
ment on all occasions. I have just returned 
from that paradise of the amateur, North- 
ern Michigan and Southern Canada, and 
there were times, numerous times, when 
I was almost overcome by “that tired 
feeling,” not due in any degree to physical 
complications. I saw cameras from pock- 
et to Saratoga trunk size, and where one 
was used intelligently, impossibilities were 
attempted with 9. 
Going up Indian river at 5:30 in the af- 
ternoon, in a driving rain, the storm cur- 
tains down and the churning and throb- 
bing of the steamer’s engine incessant, I 
saw a lovely young creature take a snap- 
shot at a friend passing on the deck. A 
few minutes later she turned her battery 
on me, as I sat chatting with a friend, and 
made a time exposure. 
“Don’t move,” she cautioned. 
“How can I help it with the steamer 
churning and pounding as it does?” I re- 
plied; and added, “You can’t take a pic- 
ture. You will only waste your plates.” 
“Yes, I suppose so,” she said; and click, 
went her shutter, while I sat there shaking 
like a jellyfish with the motion of the 
boat. 
Then she condescended to explain, 
“Taking pictures is like music; you can’t 
advance a bit unless you practice. I am 
just practicing.’ And she threw her 
mackintosh over her camera and settled 
back in her seat with the air of having 
set me right, and said a good thing. 

RECREATION. 
A few days later I exposed a plate on 
what I considered a good thing along 
Roaring brook, and just as I was folding 
up my tripod 3 women came on the scene, 
one carrying a good camera. 
“Did you make a picture from here?” 
she inquired. ‘Oh! how cute! I must have 
one, too,’ and she planted herself in the 
spot I had just vacated. An insane de- 
sire to see it through possessed me, and 
as she had no tripod, I offered her the 
use of mine. 
“No, thank you,” she gurgled. “I never 
use a tripod; I always hold my camera.” 
“But it will be impossible,” I ventured, 
“for you to hold it still the length of time 
required for an exposure in those dense 
shadows.” ; 
“T am not going to bother with a tri- - 
pod,” she said. “I'll just take a snapshot.” 
“A snapshot?” I gasped. “You surely 
don’t mean it!” 
“Oh, I'll use the large stop,’ she re- 
torted, impatiently, and as | turned away I 
heard the click of her shutter. A few 
yards down the path, a woman with a 
bored look on her face, said to me, 
“Don’t waste any time on her; she never 
made a decent picture, and never will.” 
And the woods were full of “others.” 
The snapshot fiends seemed to literally 
rage. They snapped in the shadows and 
snapped in the shade, they snapped in the 
woods and on the water, they snapped in 
the very face of old Sol himself. I never 
would have believed it, if I had not seen it. 
Frequently I was tendered bits of ad- 
vice that were hair: curlers. One man 
said to me, “You don’t seem to take many 
pictures.” I answered, dryly, it was im- 
possible for me to take a picture unless I 
saw one. Then he soared enthusiastically. 
“Everything here is a picture.” Then he 
lit with the question, “What would you 
consider a picture?” 
I told him I should call a particularly 
interesting bit of wood or water, or both, a 
picture, when it had a background, a fore- 
ground and a middle distance, with some 
particular objective point on which to focus 
as a central idea; a broken foreground, ° 
clouds in the sky, an atmospheric effect 
about it, and the whole properly lighted. 
I should want time to set up a tripod 
and focus from 3 or 4 different. positions, 
and time to expose for the shadows if I 
took it. He went on with a dazed look and 
his mouth open. 
Another man asked me if I did not- 
consider it a great mistake for an ama- 
teur to undertake his own developing and 
finishing. 
I thought of the time I heard a profes- 
sional friend, as he finished developing his 
own pictures and left the dark room, tell 
an assistant to ‘‘mix the slop and run that 
Dapeie t j 

