Welsh Journals

should be of her, so we promptly made our exposure in the bright sunshine and expectantly returned to our darkroom to develop the plate. But alas nothing came out, nor on many subsequent plates, and we simply could not understand it because we had followed the instructions implicitly. Willie declared that the camera was no good and that old Robinson in Temple Street had sold us a pup We decided to delay our decision to return the instrument, and to try harder. The real reason why we could get no image on our plates was that they were too slow to receive adequate exposure from a snapshot. We certainly did not understand this then, but I had a suspicion of underexposure and suggested a time exposure so a time exposure it was five seconds with the camera held in the hand We knew nothing about camera shake in those early days, and so we eagerly developed the plate, and to our utter delight, there was The Roman Child in all her glory a little blurred, of course, but what did we care ? This exonerated old Robinson and we forgave him willingly, as we were now able to start making prints. Frank Lewis the Grocer and his assistant known as Dan Frank had just bought a brand new Box Brownie camera. They were successful business men and could afford it. They could even make black-and-white gaslight prints that looked much nicer than our mahogany-red daylight prints. Willie and I felt certain that they had bought this wonderful camera just to beat us Still, how we envied them their outfit and their great photographic abilities But more wonderful was Arthur James Jenkins the Barber's Five by Four camera. He used it exclusively to take portraits of friends and relatives in the bright sunshine. He made his prints on the new self-toning paper, and put common salt in his fixing solution to get a colder tone. He also dipped his prints in ox gall so that he could give them a mirror-like glaze after squeegeeing them on to a sheet of plate glass. In our eyes he was a photographic aristocrat, as he stuck his finished portraits on to mounts decorated with beautiful posies of flowers around the edges. But still more wonderful was Tommy Booley's halfplate camera Tommy was the local newsagent and had come from far away in England. He was a semi-professional and made pictures of groups of people like church choirs, rugby teams, and brass bands The wonder of it all to Willie and me was the fact that you could recognise every individual in Tommy's pictures. In spite of these photographic aristocrats in the village, Willie and I still persisted, and the great climax came suddenly one day in school. We sat together in a dual desk in the back row, ever mindful of Dai Photo's watchful eye, and Willie blandly informed me that he had that very morning succeeded in making a wonderful negative of Ann Pugh, who was the maid in the Railway Inn.