The photographer is restricted to representing objects of the real world, but in the manner of portraying those objects he has vast discretionary powers; he can depart from literal recording to whatever extent he chooses without resorting to any method of control that is not of a photographic (i.e., optical or chemical) nature.
But the artist's use of these controlling powers must be con ditioned by two factors: (I) the nature of his recording process, and (2) the nature of his image. There is a frequent cause of mistaken understanding in the belief that the camera's image reproduces nature as the human eye sees it. On the contrary, its ability to record things as the unaided human eye can never see them is one of the most important attributes of photography. The human eye can focus on but one small area at a time; con sequently we observe an object or a scene only by letting our eyes rove over it in a series of short jumps. The assortment of images thus recorded are flashed to the brain which sorts and edits them, automatically discarding some as of no importance and emphasizing others, according to its individual conditioning. The impersonal camera-eye makes no such distinctions; every detail within its field of vision can be recorded instantly and with great clarity. In the time the eye takes to report an impression of houses and a street•the camera can record them completely, from their structure, spacing, and relative sizes, to the grain of the wood, the mortar between the bricks, the dents in the pave ment. The image that is thus registered has certain characteristics that at once distinguish it from the products of all other graphic processes. In its ability to register fine detail and in its ability to render an unbroken sequence of infinitely subtle gradations, the photograph cannot be equalled by any work of the human hand. For this reason any manual interference with the image at once destroys those very qualities that give the true photograph value as an art form.
From these two facts we may draw an obvious deduction: if the recording process is instantaneous and the nature of the image such that it cannot survive corrective handwork, then it is clear that the artist must be able to visualize his final result in ad vance. His finished print must be created in full before he makes his exposure, and the controlling powers enumerated above must be used, not as correctives, but as predetermined means of carry ing out that original visualization. As in the mastery of any other
graphic form, years of experience are necessary in photography before technical considerations can be made entirely subordinate to pictorial aims. The ability to prevision the finished print is the photographer's most important qualification and in order to attain it he must concentrate on learning to see in terms of his tools and processes.
Having chosen the simplest possible equipment (so as not to complicate his task needlessly) he first learns by experiment the potentialities and limitations of each instrument and process. He must learn the field of his lens, the scale of his film and paper emulsions; he must learn to judge the strength and quality of light; he must learn to translate colours into their relative monochrome values and know how those values are affected by the use of different filters.
He must learn the kind of negative necessary to produce a given kind of print, and then learn what kind of exposure and development will produce that negative ; then, having learned how those needs are fulfilled for one kind of print, he must dis cover how to vary the process to get other kinds of prints. Gradually, with experience, this knowledge becomes intuitive ; the photographer sees a scene or object in terms of his finished print without having to think of these processes any more than a musician playing a piece thinks of the whereabouts of the next note he will sound or how much pressure he will use in sounding it.
Exposure records the photographer's seeing; developing and printing execute it ; so no matter how fine the original vision, if it has not been faithfully carried out in subsequent procedures the resulting print will suffer. The clarity of image and delicacy of gradation that characterize a fine photograph demand a special kind of surface for their best presentation. A rough surface destroys the integrity of the image ; a smooth surface retains it. A shiny or reflecting surface enhances the beauty of image qual ity, while a dull or absorbing surface tends to obscure it.