Photos

There are two distinct roads in photography -- the utilitarian and the aesthetic, the goal of the one being a record of facts, and the other an expression of beauty. - Charles H. Caffin,

If I am addressing any one who has hitherto regarded art as the mere imitating of objects, this picture should open up a new idea. It would seem that it is not so much the objects as the use which the artist makes of them that constitutes art, the little something of himself mixed in with the ingredients, the personal alchemy that transmutes the commonplace into the beautiful. So, if you want your portrait taken, it may be less important what clothes you wear than whom you select to photograph them. - Charles H. Caffin -

While the picture-maker proves himself to be an artist by the selection of a subject particularly adapted to pictorial representation, by the thoroughness with which he grasps its salient characteristics, and by the vividness of his antecedent conception, he does so also by the reliance which he places on the methods of expression peculiar to his art. How few people realize that these are abstract and make their primary appeal to the eye ! Later, in the case of certain subjects, they may reach the intellect, but even then through the passage-way of the senses. In literature, on the contrary, the words travel direct to the intellect and may later arouse a brain impression as of a picture seen. But in the actual picture of painting or photography, it is the things seen which affect us, and the artist’s skill is shown in what he offers to our sight and ours in the receptivity of our vision. - Charles H. Caffin

* Charles Henry Caffin (June 4, 1854 – January 14, 1918) was an American writer and art critic, born in Sittingbourne, Kent, England. After graduating from Magdalen College Oxford in 1876, with a broad background in culture and aesthetics, he engaged in scholastic and theatrical work. In 1888 he married Caroline Scurfield. In 1892 he moved to the United States. He worked in the decoration department of the Chicago Exposition, and after moving to New York City in 1897, was art critic of Harper's Weekly, of the New York Evening Post, the New York Sun (1901–04), the International Studio, and the New York American. His publications are of a popular rather than a scholarly character. His writings were suggestive and stimulating to layman and encouraged interest in many fields of art. His essay, Art for Life's Sake described his philosophy....Etc...W
** method HDR
*** you can see in one HERE WS conversion to B & W