Artistic Photography Up to Date.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue XI, 14 March 1903, Page 737

Artistic Photography Up to Date.

MR. JENKINSON’S SARONY STUDIOS. Nothing nowadays stands still, in every trade and profession advance or retrogression is the rule, and this is, perhaps, more true of photography than anything else. The education of the publie in the appreciation of what is genuinely beautiful in photographic art has been prolonged, and is now so complete that it is useless for a man to attempt the establishment of a photographic studio unless he is both by instinct and education an artist himself. The days when one was set down in an ugly chair with one’s head clamped into an impossible position, and told to look pleasant, are gone for ever. The men who rise to the foremost rank of the art nowadays make a study of each individual sitter. They know in a moment wltat position will probably give the best result, and then, by slight variations thereof, and attention to details of lighting, they are able to produce pictures which at once give the lie to the old-fashioned contention that photography is merely a mechanical process, and not an art. This was the conclusion come to by the writer on walking round the Sarony Studios in Karangahaperoad, and looking over some exceptionally fine studies in heads, three specimens of which appear on this page. They were taken by Mr Jenkinson, who has recently arrived from Australia, and taken over the studios named. Mr Jenkinson (who took the highest award at the Adelaide Exhibition for both indoor and landscape photography, and who was the only competitor to accomplish this feat) has largely reconstructed the studios, introducing the very latest methods of lighting, and the most up-to-date

and effective artistic backgrounds. He has surrounded himself with a plant and appliances which he contends are without equal in the colony, including a splendid lens of unsual size, capable of taking direct the life-sized heads usually obtained by enlargement only. Much superior results are thus obtained, and this lens is also satisfactorily used in panel and other fine photos. For the taking of children Mr Jenkinson has a specially constructed twin lens camera, which enables him to work with a celerity and to achieve results hitherto deemed wellnigh impossible. On one occasion nr took 210 babies in seven hours, one assistant attracting the attention of the babies, and another changing plates, while Mr Jenkinson operated with the bulb, snapping oil' the kiddies at the average rate of thirty an hour. Outdoor, landscape, and architectural photography are also specialities, and of flashlight photography Mr Jenkinson has made a special study, having invented a means of burning the Hash powder infinitely superior to any other, and which renders the process absolutely certain and free from anything disagreeable. In addition to his professional business,Mr Jenkinson is agent for the Austral Pearl Paper, an exquisitely soft toning bromide, and the Sun P.0.P.. which are now preferred to European imported papers on account of their freshness, brilliant results and economy in toning, these papers being made in Melbourne by Baker and Rouse. For his own work Mr Jenkinson uses both Pearl and albumenised paper, the latter, which has come back to favour, and come back to stay, he states. The quality of Mr Jenkinson’s work needs no further comment than our reproduction, and further examples may be admired at the studio, Karangahaperoad, where every attention is shown to visitors.