PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23631, 15 October 1938, Page 22

PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

NEW ZEALANDERS CONTRIBUTE (From Our Own Correspondent) (By Air Mail) , LONDON, Sept. 19. Five New Zealanders contributed 12 photographs to the eighty-third annual exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain—Mr A. N. Breckon (Auckland), Mr William C. Davis (Cawthron Institute, Nelson). Mr E. F. Lord (Dunedin), Mr J. T. Salmon (Dominion Museum, Wellington), and Mr H. J. Schmidt (Auckland). Mr Davis, Mr Schmidt, and Mr Salmon are all associate members of the society. Three of the photographs were in the natural history section. Mr Breckon’s was a study of tern in flight, Mr Davis sent a group of Kaikoma buttercups found in Marlborough, and Mr Salmon added a New Zealand mountain bujttercup from Arthur’s Pass. Mr Lord’s contribution of five was exhibited as lantern slides in the pictorial section. They were views of Lake Pukaki and Mount Cook. Lake Wanaka, Mount Avalanche, Hochstetter Glacier, and a view of Mount Cook at sunset.

In the geological section, Mr Davis had three photographs—graptolites in slate from Mount Arthur, a fossil mussel, and Pseudomonotis Ochotica from the Wairoa Gorge. Mr Schmidt’s “Te Rangitira, a link with the past,” study of a Maori chief, was in the record and survey section. This photograph was also reproduced in “The Year’s Photography.” SMELLS PHOTOGRAPHED

One of the features of the exhibition was the photographs of the smell of the perfume of a lily and another of camphor. One observer described them as resembling “ oil upset on a wet roadway.” An official explanation said;— The emission of an odour involves volatilisation of material. If an odoriferous material is enclosed in a cell a few millimetres above a clean mercury surface, it is possible to collect on the surface of the mercury a monomolecular layer of the volatilising or odoriferous substance. “If .he mercury surface initially is covered with talc powder, the gradual formation of the monomolecular layer may be observed from the point immediately below the specimen of material. “The photographs illustrate observations of this sort on the emanations from camphor and the lily. From observations of the layers formed, the actual weight of collected emanation may be calculated.” Crime items included some remarkable exhibits. Colonel W Mansfield showed how an ultra violet light photograph exposed the forgery in the Willy Clarkson case, where a genuine letter had been obliterated and a tetter typewritten over the space, leaving the genuine signature. Another of his showed the “ dirt trick," where the forger had rubbed dirt into the signature, with the story that it had fallen in mud which had been wiped off. but the camera showed that the dirt had not been touched by a wiping motion. The forgery of rare stamps is now a difficult job. as the camera can expose the difference. The task of the Hanging Committee was as difficult as ever this year —of 2700 nrints submitted there was room for 229.

New Zealand was represented at the annua] exhibition of the London Salon of Photography by Mr Matt Grant. Entitled “A Hunter of the Heights,” his photograph was typical of a New Zealand stag-hunt-ing scene—a hunter and his kill on the clear heights of a mountain range. Proof of the excellence of Mr Grant’s work is indicated by the fact that of 5000 prints submitted, only 400 were selected for exhibitioa