eauty of a bromoil print, for instance, is
supreme to its devotee: is its superiority to other processes worth the
time and the toil necessary to make it, which might be devoted to the
study of composition, of a wider range of subject, or to the mastery of
simpler processes? Picture construction and print quality are after all
the main things in photography, not the medium we use.

There is no royal road to distinction in photography, but each year sees
some helps devised for the earnest worker, whether amateur or
professional. For the amateur there is now an increasing variety of
cameras and photographic material. New cameras are coming from abroad,
among them a small French moving-picture machine, the "Sept," which can be
carried in the hand and with which, it is claimed, good "stills" may be
taken as well as good regulation movie pictures. An auto-focus enlarger,
at a comparatively small price, has also been put on the market for
amateur use; and with the increasing use of small cameras and the adoption
of simpler methods this may prove a boon to those who wish to make bromide
enlargements more easily than they could by the older methods. It is to
be regretted that platinum paper is not being manufactured in America for
photographic purposes, for the quality of a choice platinum print is still
regarded by many as unsurpassed, and many workers wish to see platinum
resume its old place among the photographer's resources. Many "spotlight"
machines and artificial illuminating devices have been put on the market,
and with these the photographer will be equipped to play on his sitters
the "light that never was on sea or land," if he so desires. But the
ingenious photographer who is quick to seize good lighting effects will
not need the aid of artificial lighting, anymore than did the early master
of photography, D. O. Hill, whose simple effects reached almost the
finality of lens art.

Just here I might add a word as to the increasing coalescence of the
amateur and the professional photographer in America. Strictly speaking,
an amateur may be said to be one who gets no return in money for his work,
while the professional's work is mainly financial in its object. The
amateur photographer, however, finds his expenses heavy and the temptation
strong to sell his pictures; while in America the professional
photographer is frequently so much in love with the pictorial
possibilities of his work that he loses sight of the