COMBINATION NEGATIVES However carefully combination printing may he done, there is always the danger of the prints being unequal, and that the exact contrast of tone may not be the same in several prints taken from the same negative. The best plan, theoreti cally, is to combine the pictures on the negative, but this is not always possible, and is invariably very difficult. An example of this kind is shown in one of the plates. In this case the negative is printed from in the ordinary way. The method of making such a negative is as follows. The portions representing the figure and back ground are upon a 12 by 10 plate, and were taken in the usual manner. A real lattice window was employed, and out side this was placed a dark background of even tint. On a 5 by 4 plate (or just a little larger than the opening in the win dow) was taken a sunrise view, purposely a little out of focus. This was attached to the glass side of the negative with a little gum at each corner. Portions which ap peared too dark were modelled up with the brush, and those which were too dense were locally reduced with a little ferricyanide and hypo. It ought to have been mentioned that the view was " vig netted " in the camera ; that is to say, it was taken through an aperture in a card of about the size of the opening in the window, so that it had no sharp or decided margins. Two negatives were then taken of heads of different size, and vignetted in the camera as before, and the film stripped, cut out, and floated upon a cloud negative.
A portion of the cloud negative which might otherwise have covered the figure was then cut away, and the whole attached to the glass side of the 12 by negative, as in the case of the sunrise view. The negative thus made up is ready for printing without further trouble. Such work opens up the way for a practically unlimited play of artistic feeling, and ! deserves, in spite of its many difficulties, to be far more practised. True, it is not perhaps a perfect method of artistic ex- I pression, hut what method is? Some I photographers—possibly those who have tried and failed—affect to despise such work, yet they have admired pictures so produced without being aware of the method of production ; whilst, on the other ; hand, like the taxidermic critic of the live owl, who found fault with the stuffing, they , will sometimes call attention to the un natural combination of two things .which actually are upon the same negative. The late Mr. H. P. Robinson, the finest ex ponent of this class of work photography has known, used to tell some amusing inci dents of this kind. It goes without saying, that unless the work is done with extreme care and proper attention to detail, the results may be exceedingly bad. Com binations which are purposely incongruous arc dealt with in a later section.