The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1885-08-30
The Spread of the Mania for
Photography.
TAKING VIEWS ON THE WING.
Scenes in the Amateurs Association
Rooms-Odd and Arts tic
Work.

a pleasant and natural expression
not too serious" has for years been the
awful sentence imposed upon sitters be-
fore the cameras of photographers.
Then, with a feeling of crime rising
rapidly in his heart, the muscles of his
face becoming like iron and cold perspir-
alton starting from every pore, the
anguish-stricken sitter has dumbly
glared while the operator held the time
piece of fate in his hand and counted
the slow seconds of the victims doom.
All that has been CHANCELLOR might be,
rather-by the invention of the dry
plate, or instantaneous process of pho
Biography. 1t is said that it might be,
instead of that it has been, for the
peculiar reason that the dry plate pro-
cess has not been adopted by many pro-
fessional photographers, although there
are over two hundred amateurs who are
successfully using it. Many of the pro-
fessionalS are welded to the old wet
plate process and are slow to realize the
advantages of the new, if in fact the
new has any advantages for the profess
sional, for il is not claimed here that it
has. But to the scores of enthusiastic
amateurs who have become infected
with the mania for photography, the
instantaneous process has very many
advantages. They go about always
seeking something new to picture with
their faithful cameras, and what they
seek is generally of a nature not to OBJ
serve any injunction to remain perfectly
still and to assume q pleasant and
natural eXpresSion-not too serious. In
fact the favorite subjects of the anna
teurs are anything but still life or por-
traits, as a visit TO the rooms of the
Pacific Coast Amateur Photographic
Association, 3lS Pine Street, will show.
TAKEN ON THE MOVE.
The amateurs prefer something on the
goa race-horse, yacht, the clouds, a
tangle of shrubbery swayed by the
wind, herd of cows-anything with
the element of picturesqueness or oddi-
ty. The amateurs are Unsuitable and
The one who was out for
walk with his camera under his arm and
saw a balloon just ascending from
public garden was considered particu-
larry lucky. The balloon was taken
of course, and a finished picture of it
hangs as q trophy on the walls OF the
society's rooms. Those who are only
familiar with The cumbersome apparatus
laborlously wheeled about in photo
graphers' studios will be puzzled to
how such a subject as an as
cending balloon could be photographed
without previous preparation. A polite
and entertaining amateur who showed
a Chronicle reporter through the So
ciety's rooms explained this interesting
point. The amateur, with his snug
little apparatus under his arm, is al
ways ready for work. Attached to the
camera is neat little arrangement
called finder" which is a camera in
miniature. When a yacht, friend,
pig, couple of fighting roosters, or
anything else, is seen and wanted, the
amateur takes look through his finder,
waits till the subject is sighted, touches
a spring, walks unconcernedly on and
the deed is done. The spring which he
touches works mechanism which ex-
poses the dry plate for less than one
hundredth part of second, yet per-
feet negative of the subject has been
taken. The clumsy tripod is no longer
carried-only the camera and some
plates-and the camera is held in the
hands or under the arm, or rested on
any convenient object. Many amateurs
are displaying very pretty taste in the
subjects of their work, and new inter
est is created by the fact that they take
so many objects in motion.
YACHTING SCENES.