Evening Star Newspaper, December 7, 1930, Page 89

| et =3 ~ STAR *Spring,” a beautiful willow on the . But the tree is a& twig with grasses for foliage. LANDSCAPE photograph is not always the phctcgraph of a land- scape. That sounds strange. But it's S the truth. Take a look at the pic- tures on this page. They all look like land- peapes. - Framed, they look even more so. Hung in a photographic salon with other Bandscapes they attract first attention. As a matter of fact most of these pictures have graced the walls of photographic galleries in New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Syracuse, Seattle and other points on $hie continent. They have been noted as some Of the finest examples of landscape photography ever produced at these exhibitions, They were placed prominently at salons in Dublin, Tokio, Paris, Poland, Antwerp, Czechoslovakia, and have been requested by photographic exhibi- tions in Barcelona, Montevideo, Austria and England. Wherever these photographic landscapes have been shown they have been given wide acclaim, Photographers and artists who judge at pho- pographic exhibitions give points to a photo= graph for its photog.aphic merit as well as the portrayal of the subject. They compare these fandscapes with others hung in the gallery. frhese attract them more than others. These somehow differ. They are pictures out of the . They arouse curiosity. Where was this ! taken? Few know. Those who do stand astounded. R these artistic representations of scenes # of nature were made in an ordinary house basement, with its furnace, its coal room, vege= $able baskets, boxes, laundry lines, odds and ends. It was in a basement, a small one at that, and in only a corner of that small base- ment; that these trees grew, that these rocks fook form, that the g.ass became alive, Alfred T. Roberts of Toronto, is a photogra- T. That is his profession. It has been since day he left high school, and that is a good 85 years ago. He works for a large Toronto commercial :hotognphic house, not a protrait studio, but concern which does commercial &nd indus- Srial photography, buildings, interiors, mer- phandise, jewelry, and other such articles. A. fil:obem does most of the article photography fth & futuristic background, and that requires imore than just photog:aphy. That is what he #ides in the daytime. At night he is still the photographer, with fhis difference. Now it is his hobby. He can - Gake his time at it, he does not have to take & dozen prints in half an hour. There are no ° orders to flll. His artistic soul can have full c\v. He can experiment all he likes. And likes it plenty. Witness the pictures on this Page, but a few of a big collection of superb soenic effects. ll‘ Was some three years ago while working . around in his cellar workshop photographing $oys that the idea of landscapes came to Rob- grts. If toys could give such startling effects Bs he had managed to obtain, why could not pes such as might be found in the oute -the-way places of the earth be made to order there in his workshop? That began for . Roberts an adventure which has resulted in his becoming internationally known among photographers as a genius in photographing fine landscapes. The difference between a real landscape and Bne of these photegraphed landscapes is that in the photograph of a true landscape the trees are real, the grass is real, stones and paths, ° THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., DECEMBER 7, 1930. Alfred T. Roberts in his studio where he rides his queer hobby of miniature photography, building toy “sets” which produce photographs so real that many critics ask to know where the beautiful landscapes may be found. hills and valleys, all these necessary items to the landscape a:e set up by nature. It requires merely a good photographer to take the picture, But in these pictures, with their trees, hills, stones, paths, rocks, sand and grass, none of these things exist in reality. What appears to be a tree, and looks like a real tree, deep-rooted in the ground, is merely a peculiarly shaped piece of driftwood, perhaps a root turned upside down, a yarrow, or grass. What look like huge rock cliffs are but large pieces of stone, and what seem to be boulders are merely pebbles. Nor 1s the grass and the bush that make up the base of many of these landscapes real. Fur and sponge, with sand strewn here and there, solve the problem. And snow is but a white flaky powder. Paths are thin coatings of sand over cardboard. And when a marine scene is taken, the lake can be a shiny ferrotype tin or black crepe paper, the latter giving the effect of waves. THESE are thé implements with which this photographer works to create sych star- tling landscapes. Sticks and stones, pieces of fur, grit, even clinkers out of his furnace, wet sand and dry sand, coke dust, twigs, wet cotton batting, roots, coal, anything. In a number of boxes, large and small, he keeps his parapher- TS NEW CRAZE WITH TOY LANDSCAPES Alfred T. Roberts, Toronto Photographer, Makes Beautiful Scenery on the Top of a Table, Using Dead 1wigs, Small Stones, Bits of Grass, Old Fur and Other Rubbish, but His Pictures Look Like Real Outdoors. nalia. And after every storm he goes out along the beach to collect more pieces of wood. But how, with all these things, are such realistic scenes made? As you stand with the photographer in his basement studio you learn the secrets of the process. “First of all, when I have an idea,” this ex- pert photographer tells you, the while he puffs at his pipe, “and I am not ready to work on it, I sketch it in a small book I keep for that pur- pose. Now an idea may come to me while I am sitting reading the papers, or while I am out for a walk gathering material along the beach near the house. I make a rough sketch of the idea, then work it out at my leisure, till I have all the details in my mind, the main idea on paper. “Then the first time I feel like doing some work at it, I go down ready to set up a scene and photograph it. “You see this root,” as he picked out one of many and held it upside down, “doesn’t that make a fine tree? Or this piece of washed-up twig, can’t you see the tree?” And there is no doubt about it. the root or the twig would make fine trees as he holds them up. In fact in the pile of twigs and roots you can make out trees that you have seen in pictures. Stately trees on a rocky crag. It is hard @ basement and that there is not a sing pears to be. \ “I take whichever of these twigs fits my scheme best and fasten it down to this piece of cardboard, which is my base, with plasticine or tacks. Then I take some of this fur, whic! I get from old coats, build it up to resemble the hills or undulations that I desire, pull it up a bit here, flatten out a bit there, and I have a good foundation. If it is to make part of the background, hills or woods, I place it at the far end of the cardboard, put my sand in front of it, spread some grit here and there to resemble stones, put stones where they are needed, large or small, depending on the scheme, and I am about ready.” ALL the pictures have sky background. These skies are the only real thing about the pictureS. They are photographs of skies which Mr. Roberts takes whenever he sees a good sky formation with the right lighting. He has a whole box full of skies, enlarged to fit as a background to his scenes. This past Summer he took 30 new skies, which he will use for his landscape work this Winter. enlarged skies are mounted on glass to fit into a holder. The sky is about the same size as the base on which the scene is built, two feet by one foot. When the picture is built up, and the sky in place, the lighting comes into play. Mr. Rob- erts has this all fixed up. He has to light up from the sides and also from above. He-has a number of ordinary frosted bulbs from 40 to 100 watts. No Klieg lights, no spots of high power, no big arecs, only what can be found in the ordinary house. He has a small arc light, but it is very small indeed. “The lighting and the perspective are the two hardest parts of this work,” he explains. “You have to light the scene so that it coincides with your sky background. If the clouds are lit up a certain way by the sun, then your lighting must come from the same direction, must light up the scene in the way the sun would if the scene were real. And that is by no means easy. “The same applies to perspective. Something that is supposed to be distant must be distant, and look the real thing. For instance, my trees as they go back on the stage must become smaller. So must rocks if they are in the scene. And the lighting must be exact, so as not to throw shadows where they are not supposed to be.” WHEN the lighting seems perfect, when the ; scene is as good as thé maker wants it, then a frame is put up in front of it, and it becomes like a framed picture. It takes careful surveying to see that all is as it should be, There may be lights to change. A bush close by may look too large. The sand between the tufts of fur may not be realistic enough to portray wind-swept hillsides. The trees may not have the right inclination for the direce tion of the wind as shown by the clouds. All these little things have to be watched. Then when everything is in order to suit the photographer, and no shadows play on the sky, ' the camera is set up. This is no trick machine. It is an ordinary photographer’s camera, such as is to be found in any small photographer's shop. It has no special lens. In fact, it is an old type of lens, not a sharp anastigmat lens, for, as Mr. Roberts pointed out, such a lens would be too sharp, Continued on Peurteenth Page to believe that this picture was made in le thing in it that is really whas it ape The -