BARNET BOOK OF PHOTOGRAPHY.
134
and the other part
pin-wire,
cotton-wool
like
or
smoke.
Clearly such inconsistencies have only to be mentioned to
At the same
be condemned.
time, a warning against the
other extreme (monotony of definition)
One
symptoms of
of the
epidemic
is
We
focus."
is
equally called
the all-absorbing desire to " get
Kate or uncle
see cousin
background of brick
for.
the early stages of the photographic
The
wall.
Tom
it all
in sharp
posed against a
shows us every
leaf,
every joint of brickwork, every button, every stripe of the
garments. detail.
The total is a bewildering mass of irritating The more the eye looks the more irritated it
becomes.
This naturally brings us to the vastly important
subject of
BACKGROUNDS. It is
not too
pictorial
thing
much
portrait
is
is certain, viz.
largely
due
that
is
good
portrait without a fore
to say that the success or failure of a
it
{i.e.
make a good
suitable) background.
behoves the amateur never to lose sight of
This point
is
One
background.
to the
not possible to
It there-
this factor.
here insisted on, because in the majority of
cases the amateur's
first
portraits are obviously taken with-
The
out any thought whatever being given to this matter. victim
is
made number to
bewildering
stand
some other
a brick wall,
with
a
of lines or joints showing, or against
a trellis-work screen, which ivy or
against
foliage,
patch of light to catch and
may
or
may
where every irritate
not be covered with leaf has
the eye.
a glittering
Or perhaps he
stands in the middle of the lawn, with a fowl-pen or row of
houses in the distance.
If these are sufficiently sharp to
recognisable they appear as objects of ugliness, or focus they form distracting blotches. are
made
in a
room we have perhaps a
is
only one rule to be laid down,
be
out of
If the experiments
fidgeting wall-paper
pattern, or irritating patches of pictures
There
if
on the
viz.
wall,
&c.
that the back-