The photographic instructor : for the professional and amateur, being the comprehensive series of practical lessons issued to the students of the Chautauqua School of Photography

Front matter

Digitized by

THE

Photographic Instructor,

Preface

In the autumn of 1 886 the authorities of the Ghautauqua University recognized the growing demand for photographic knowledge by establishing a school of photography in accordance with Chautauqua ideas and as an integral part of the great university.

Prof. Charles Ehrmann was chosen the instructor of the school, and The Photographic Times its organ. Practical instruction was given during the assembly season, the following summer, at the Chautauqua grounds, and corresponding classes were formed which regularly received the printed lessons by mail, and the written criticism of work sent to Prof. Ehrmann for that purpose, with his advice and suggestions, supplementary to the printed lessons, as the peculiar needs of individual students seemed to require. Provision was made for answering all questions of the students, by number, in a department devoted to that purpose in the The Photographic Times, and the school rapidly grew in numbers, influence, and usefulness. It has now become an important department of the great Chautauqua University, with representatives from nearly every State in the Union, with a few even from abroad, and a reputation which has extended to countries beyond the sea.

Local classes for practical instruction at the school's headquarters, New York, during the autumn, winter, and spring, have recently been .started, and with entire success ; so that now, personal, oral, and demonstrative teaching is given by the instructor of the school during the four seasons of the year, besides the written and printed instruction which is

PREFACE.

mailed to a much larger number during the entire twelve months. It was the great practical value of these printed lessons, written as they were by authorities on the various subjects of which they treated, that suggested the advisability of issuing them in the permanent and convenient form which their usefulness seemed so justly to deserve.

Carefully revised, rearranged, and enlarged, they have, therefore, been herein collected, with an appendix added, on the nature and use of the various chemicals and substances employed in photographic practice, by Prof. Ehrmann, and some tables, with other photographic information taken from " The American Annual of Photography and the Photographic Times Almanac." ^o Prof. Ehrmann is also due the credit for contributing most of the lessons in this book, for he originally wrote the greatest part of them.

Mr. Charles Wager Hull, Superintendent of the School, wrote several of the lessons which form the opening chapters ; while Prof. Randall Spaulding, of the Montclair High School ; Prof. Karl Klauser, of Farmington, Conn.; Mr. John Carbutt, the dry-plate maker of Philadelphia ; Mr. O. G. Mason, of Bellevue Hospital, New York ; and Dr. Maurice Miller, of the University of the City of New York, deserve the thanks of the reader for the remaining lessons, not written by

The Editor of The Photographic Times.

Editorial Rooms, ISTew York City, June, 1888.

Contents

PAGE

Preface, 3

Introduction, 7