“Mountain photography” (7)

Hints on the art and technique from a practitioner of the nineteen-forties.

Pictorial work: The greater part of this book is concerned with the production of competent record photographs. It is probable that a fairly general measure of agreement can be reached as to whether or not any particular print is a sound and straightforward piece of work approaching its aim of giving the observer as natural and realistic a rendering of the scene as possible, or whether it has achieved the limited objective for which it was intended, e.g. the rendering of distant detail, or the recording of exact proportions for the purpose of measurement. 

"Perfection of light and tone": the Biancograt by Andreas Pedrett.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

When photography aspires to be an artistic medium, differences and difficulties arise, for the camera is not an easy tool with which to secure that freedom of interpretation and personal expression which is supposed to be fundamental to art.

BERTRAM COX, F.R.P.S., puts the case very succinctly: "The photographer who is trying to produce something which shall have more than a transitory interest or value from the aesthetic point of view, might well consider how his position compares with that of the artist. First he has in his medium little or no opportunity for the exercise of any real creative ability. . . . Secondly, the photographer may become a master of his medium but even then its characteristics have been mainly determined by the manufacturer and are to a great extent inflexible. . . . What is left to him as a craftsman is the choice of selection from a variety of methods of arriving at slightly dissimilar results. Selection seems to be the only method by which he can work . . . he must be aware of what makes his selection worthwhile, and must be extremely critical for he has little control over problems of the elimination of the unessential."

Jingling Pot, Kingsdale, Yorkshire by E Simpson.
Illustration from Mountain Photography by C Douglas Milner.

Before looking at mountain country as a hunting ground for good pictures, it is useful to consider what means of selection are at our disposal, and what ideas it is necessary to have in mind in making a choice. A picture, whether it be a painting, a photograph, a woodcut or an etching, is primarily an arrangement of line and tone within a selected space, which aims to be complete within that space and to speak its meaning to the observer in simple terms of tone or line or colour, as the case may be. An oil painting is expected to show something of what artists call the "quality of paint", a watercolour seeks to convey ideas and form in terms of transparent colour laid over white paper, and not to imitate tones of the depth and brilliance possible in oils. Similarly a photograph should conform to its own conventions and will be most acceptable if it confirms that the worker has accepted the discipline of photography and yet created a print which owes as much if not more to the manner of its taking than to subject interest.

References

From C Douglas Milner, Mountain Photography: Its Art and Technique in Britain and Abroad, The Focal Press, First printed October 1945, reprinted June 1946.