Popular Photography Annual – 1951 Edition

Prejudicial choice in favor of particular schools of photography ha been avoided in an attempt to show what is being done in all fields. The camera is the great unifying instrument and symbol, and in this annual it will be found in the hands of pastoralists documentaries, journalists, experimentalists, commercial illustrators, portraitists and serious amateurs – all of whom have used it in a variety of ways of the creation of exciting images and the expression of facts and ideas in black and white and color.

The variety of accomplishment prompted the editors to seek out the underlying variety of approaches, and in so doing the value of the book to camera owners has been immeasurably enhanced. By means of this, they may acquire a clever and more practical understanding of the picture-taking techniques that was used by outstanding photographers.

It is true that technique should always be considered secondary to the creative thinking. Pictures distinguished only or mainly by their technical mastery usually have little human appeal. For this reason the photographs in this annual were not chosen primary for their technical excellence but for their qualities as pictures.

White Pagoda by Francis Wu

Francis Wu of Hong Kong took this interesting picture, White Pagoda, with a 3 ¼ by 4 ¼ Zeiss Ica Reflex Camera and an f2.5 Cooke lens. To concentrate attention on the beautiful oriental structure, the photographer used the plain sky as a background. He placed a light green filter over the camera lens so that there would be sharp separation between the white foreground building and the blue sky. Exposure on Kodak Super –XX film was 1/350 second at f16