Every Photo is a Story
Part 4: Explore the Photographer's Era

Try It Yourself Exercise

Prints and Photographs Division

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Before getting started:

Watch "Every Photo is a Story" Part 4: Explore the Photographer's Era

Review the Top Tips for Part 4: Explore the Photographer's Era:

• Learn about the photographer's era. Read publications about the time period, including newspapers and popular periodicals.
• Think about where the photos would have been used and seen. Consider how photographs might differ if taken for clients, for publications, for lectures or for exhibits.
• Consider the photo composition. Art, design, and aesthetic movements contemporary to the photographer can impact composition, color, contrast and other visual elements.

Glossary of Terms:*

Camera angle: Camera’s position in relation to the subject.

Composition: Arrangement of the subject elements in an image.

Contrast: Relative difference between the lightest and darkest part of an image.

Depth of field: Range of distances in which the photographic subject can be captured visually with sharpness.

Enframement:  “The arrangement of a view through a cut vista-opening or between foreground trees may give pictorial enframement…The fundamental effect produced is concentration of the observer’s attention…”  Source:  Henry Vincent Hubbard and Theodora Kimball, An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1917), 90.

Perspective: Technique of representing depth, especially on a two-dimensional surface, through the use of vanishing points, foreshortening, and aerial effects.  Source:  Richard Pearce-Moses, A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2005.)

Point of view: The photographer’s perspective or relationship to the image.

Sequence: Serial arrangement of images that presents a story, explains a process, or documents an activity.

* Unless otherwise noted, glossary definitions adapted from: Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Diane Vogt-O’Connor, Photographs: Archival Care and Management, (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006.)

Exercise 1: Frame the View

In Part 4: Explore the Photographer's Era, we looked at how Johnston framed views in the garden, similar to the enframement diagram found in a landscape design book of that era.

Diagram: Relation of enframement and vista point.
Source: An Introduction to the Study of Landscape Design
by Henry Vincent Hubbard; Theodora Kimball. New York: Macmillan, 1917. Drawing 16, p. 126.

We compared the diagram to two photos in the Johnston lantern slides, including this one.

"Arcady," George Owen Knapp house, Sycamore Canyon Road, Montecito, California.
Lower garden, view to Santa Ynez Mountains.
Hand-colored glass lantern slide by Frances Benjamin Johnston, Spring 1917

1. Find three more examples in the Johnston lantern slides where she frames the view similarly to either of the enframement diagrams. Explore the entire collection of Frances Benjamin Johnston lantern slides.

2. After you locate three examples, study each image carefully. In your opinion, what makes this an effective composition? After you complete Exercise 2, come back and think about the similarities and differences between the enframement diagrams and the perspective diagram.

Exercise 2: Find Perspective

In Part 4: Explore the Photographer's Era, we also looked at how Johnston captured views similarly to a perspective diagram of an alley of trees found in a book on composition from that era.

Diagrams showing perspective, including a road with trees in a symmetrical arrangement of perspective.
Source: Landscape and Figure Composition by Sadakichi Hartmann. New York: Baker and Taylor, [1910], p. 29, diagrams 17, 18, and 19.

We compared the diagram to a photo in the Johnston lantern slides below.

"El Fureidis," James Waldron Gillespie house,
Parra Grande Lane, Montecito, California. Entrance drive.
Hand-colored glass lantern slide by Frances Benjamin Johnston, Spring 1917.

1. Find three more examples in the Johnston lantern slides where she frames the view similarly to the perspective diagram showing the alley of trees. (Remember, the image doesn't have to include trees or a road. Think about what other landscape features can create the same effect.) Explore the entire collection of Frances Benjamin Johnston lantern slides.

2. After you locate three examples, study each image carefully. In your opinion, what makes this an effective composition? What similarities and differences do you see from the enframement diagrams in Exercise 1?

Exercise 3: Plan a Garden

In Part 4: Explore the Photographer's Era, we introduce the idea of landscape plans as a tool for researchers trying to understand a garden.

1. Look closely at the plan of the Blue Garden of Newport, Rhode Island. (Printing the plan is recommended for the next phase of the exercise.)

General plan of the Blue Garden at Beacon Hill House... In: John Taylor Boyd, Jr. "The Work of Olmsted Brothers," Architectural Record, v. 44 (Dec. 1918): 510.

2. Explore all of the lantern slides Frances Benjamin Johnston created for the Blue Garden of Newport, Rhode Island.

3. With the plan in hand, can you find each photograph's place on the map? Start with physical landmarks on the photos and try to match them to the map. (Printing the photos may be helpful as well.) Can you map the garden through Johnston's slides?

4. After you match as many photographs as you can to locations on the garden plan, think about the sequence of the slides. How would you show these slides to an audience in order to tell the story of the Blue Garden?