| Show IHOW ro MAKf MONEY I VIIH AN fl AMAHUR CAMmA An amateur camera is usually regarded re-garded as an object upon which to spend money rather than a means by which money can be made But I know more than one bright young girl who makes her snapshot box pay its way and much more beside Perhaps the best way of Illustrating what is meant is to detail the success of a few of these young persons prefacing prefac-ing the recital with the proviso that one cannot make moneynor have much pleasure eitherwith a camera till one has mastered all the details of the business To do well as an amateur or a semiprofessional semi-professional one should be able to develop de-velop print mpunt and handle any department with professional nicety and skill The first young woman I knew who I made money with her camera took I must say a photograph in many ways I superior to any professional work I have ever seen She was an enthusiast and she had the feeling for her work She had not of course a maqhine suitable for taking tak-ing portraitsheads merely and if she had had she would not have been able to retouch such pictures retouching I being the one department it Is best for the amateur not to attempt but as she worked it the plan did not call for anything of the sort She was when I saw her at a mountain moun-tain resort 20 miles from a lemon and nobody knows how many from a professional pro-fessional photographer She had partly paid her board at the hotelan expensive one by taking I views of the buildings and various picturesque pic-turesque spots about to be used for reproduction re-production in an advertising pamphlet I She spent long laborious happy days getting views of the surrounding scen I erp arid pictures of quaint mountain I characters cabins and characteristic scenes These sold readily among the guests at the hotel singly or mounted in albums al-bums and with neatly decorated covers cov-ers and she told me that she had a market for them all winter at home Her best negatives of this sort she said she could sell if she would consent not to use them herself to various concerns con-cerns in the large cities who deal in unmounted photographs or to photoengraving photo-engraving establishments which make a speciality of getting up illustrations and advertising matter Then there were the guests at the hotel who were always wanting to be photographed singly or In groups with some landmark as a background and these pictures she soJd by the dozen like a professional and at a specified rate The second girl I knew who made a success with her camera had gone so far as to hardly rate with the amateurs at all She lives in the south and she has made specialty of negro types She began taking negro children found that on account of the dark skin the work was quite different from taking white people and has gone steadily forward till she Is well known In the photographic world She does not confine herself to comic subjects nor pure blooded Africans but rather seeks the most beautiful models she can One of her plates A Madonna of the Tubs showing a handsome yellow woman who has turned from her washing wash-ing In the plctureque half barrel tub to pick up cJu nurse her baby sold recently re-cently for a hIgh price The laundry work Is going on as It frequently does in that section down by a branch The little stream shows i in the background the big wash kettle in the fore the piled up clothes the handsome mother and the pretty child make a picture any artist might be proud of She has never mounted her work in albums though I certainly think it would sell well that way but sells it in collections of ten pictures under names like Child Life in Black and White Unbleached Cotton ten studies stu-dies of cotton pickers from blooming young girls surrounded with the cotton blossoms to old men whose wool shames in whiteness the bursting bolls they carry and one which she Is always al-ways sold out of Dusky Cherubs showing cunning naked babies most quaintly pictured She makes a specialty too of large pictures for framing and for portfolios and of course she has now a large and expensive camera but she began with one of the wellknown makes of snapshot shot machines and she says she made it pay from the beginning The last girl I have to tell of Is bv no means the artist that either of these others is but she is a bright businesswoman business-woman and she has done well She has a clientele among women who like to have their new dresses or some little new arrangement of their rooms photographed She goes to them about once in so often and they keep her fairly busy Then she is a great lover of animals has a faculty with them which amounts to positive genius and she is in great demand to make photographs of these muchprized friends of man and womankIndwho do not like to go to the regular photographer She used to take her camera she tells me and go a little way out of town stopping where she saw a very pretty child or where the house and grounds n ere In extremely nice order or there was a fine dog or cat about and showing show-ing her work In the line ask If the owner would not like a photograph She says she seldom failed to find that they would Children and pets are difficult things to get to the studio In good condition their pictures too are I worth double taken amid familiar surroundings I sur-roundings and if it were the view of the house and grounds she had the advantage that the regular photographer I photog-rapher charges so much to come out from town to make a single picture while she would take a halt dozen negatives I neg-atives in one morning Understand these young women none of them made a success without trying You cannot do that with a camera any more than you can with anything else In life but they were not of greater artistic abilities than yourself perhaps and they did nothing > noth-Ing disagreeable nothing one could not do and remain a lady and they have certainly made money as well as reputation repu-tation and pleasure out of their cameras cam-eras KATHARINE WHISTLER |
