GENERAL MERCHANDISE. A few years ago a traveling man, starting out on the road, required a dray, numerous trunks and any number of people to get him off, and it required trunks and drays to keep him going, as he carried samples in some form of practically everything he sold. If he carried any sort of a perishable line, such as candy, cigars, baked goods, etc., they had to be con tinually replenished from stock at headquarters, which made a great many broken odd lots, and a large force of workers was needed to keep the samples in tip-top shape at all times.
Nowadays, the same fellow, with the same line, will go in to see a cus tomer, carrying only a portfolio, and in that portfolio he will have photographs of his entire line, shown to much better advantage than ever before—besides, he has not the heavy trunks, nor the bother of carting them around, nor the necessity of renting a hotel room to show his samples.
Of course, there are still some lines where they persist in carrying samples, but present conditions are rapidly hustling those few into the use of photo graphs.
You often hear the argument, "I can't sell my goods from photographs." An answer to that argument is the mail-order houses of Chicago, who do mil lions of dollars' worth of business annually—all from pictures.
Photographs for cuts for catalogues and for salesmen's books represent so many varied lines that all I can do in this instance is to pick out a few of them and explain the methods of procedure, for they run all the way from candy to,medical specimens.
If you want a real experience, just work for one of the large commercial studios, and in six months' time I will guarantee you will have photographed practically everything under the sun and lots of stuff that isn't under the sun. To my mind, medical specimens are about the worst I have encountered—at least, they made the most impression on me.
The layout is one of the first things to be considered in merchandise work. The standard merchandise print size, that is, for salesmen's samples, is gener ally 10 x 12, although some of them do use 8 x 10, this latter size usually made for the engraving houses. .
In grouping articles for photographing on an 8 x 10, that is, for large layouts to be reduced to 8 x 10, the proportions should be 16 x 20, 24 x 30, etc., whereas, those for 10 x 12 are 20 x 24, 30 x 36, 40 x 48, and so on. You can then group your articles within these lines, and you will know that they will come in proportion to your plate and the plate be well filled, as most cus tomers like to see them.
In lining tip small articles for photographing, such as jewelry, where the rows must be regular, the general procedure is to use, for instance, a 10 x 12 piece of preferably flashed opal glass, and a piece of paper same size. Rule lines on the paper both horizontally and vertically, in squares similar to the way the ground-glass is ruled, and illustrated in a previous chapter. By plac ing this paper under the glass, you can line up the articles absolutely straight, quickly and easily. The paper can then be removed and the glass transferred to the vertical camera and in the photograph they will look right.
An excellent medium for holding articles such as rings and other fine parts in an upright position for photographing, is what is known as jewelers' white wax, which photographs pure white and, as it is very tenacious, it takes a minute quantity to do the work.
A good method whereby the size of the articles on a page of merchandise may be determined by prospective customers, and especially where many are crowded onto one page, is to include in the picture a tape measure, as illus trated in illustration No. 31. This tape measure should be rigid, that is, mounted on something which will hold it taut at all times, so that it can be placed in the same focal plane as the articles being photographed, and should be of a color (preferably yellow) that will show up well against any back ground.