PORTRAIT Room. The construction of the room in which portraits are taken is a matter of the first importance. The best arrangement for producing a pleasing expression in the countenance of the sitter, an artistic effect of light and shade, and a portrait free from distortion and disagreeable exaggeration of near objects, is as follows :— The room should be at least 30 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 8 feet high at the sides. The roof should have a ridge from end to end. Both ends of the room should be dark, and nearly in the middle there should be a window on each side coming down to within 3 feet of the floor and going up to the roof. In the roof there should be two skylights exactly corresponding in breadth with the windows, and going up to the ridge. The width of the windows and skylights need not exceed 6 feet. They should be provided both with black and white blinds, which can be drawn at pleasure, and also with the means of opening and shutting them in calm or hot we,ather. The background is placed at that end of the room which is nearest to the windows and the camera at the other. White screens, moveable on rollers, should also be at hand when required to throw a reflected light upon any part. The room should be entirely papered with a very dark blue paper; and the eyes of the sitter should never be directed towards the light, but into darkness.
The portrait room should, if possible, be built of wood, and made to turn about an axis in the centre, with two wheels at each end, so that it may be placed in any direction with respect to the light. When this is not practicable it should be placed north and south, and the sitter should face the north. A lens of long focus and large aperture should be used in preference to one of short focus and small aperture ; not because a large aperture is better than a small one, but because it is at present a matter of unavoidable necessity. A lens
of too short focus for the size of the picture produces horrible distortion in the image. Photographers generally are too fond of straining their lenses and working with oblique pencils. The only objection which can properly be raised against a lens of long focus and suitable aperture is that which arises from the room being filled with the smoky atmosphere of a town, which renders the picture indistinct and produces fog when the camera is too far from the sitter. To avoid this evil, portraits should always be taken in the suburbs and not in the centre of a large town.
The floor of the portrait room should be covered with light holland in the neighbourhood of the sitter, and with dark drugget at the end opposite to him. Chairs, sofas, tables, vases, &c., should not be polished, because the high lights look like spots of snow in the picture. Nothing plain, or poverty-stricken, or of ugly design should appear in the portrait room ; on the contrary it should be furnished with articles of taste and luxury, but not with anything gaudy or distracting to the eye. The camera stand should be placed upon a platform mounted on wheels.
In taking a portrait, one of the side windows should always have either the white or black blind drawn, and the same may in general be said of one of the skylights. The object of this is to throw more light upon one side of the face than the other.