Camera Magazine – May 1953

Drifting In The Moonlight By Francis Wu

Photos From The Twentieth Wilmington Salon
Drifting In The Moonlight by Francis Wu

When Francis Wu, Master of Photography, P.A. of A., Hon Member of PSA, FPSA, FRPS, FIBP, FRSA, visited America some months ago, we had the pleasure of examining many of his fine pictures and chose this as the one we’d like most to show to the readers. When it turned up in Wilmington we laid hands upon it and bore it triumphantly back to Baltimore.

About the making of this masterpiece Dr. Wu says:

“Drifting in the Moonlight” was a title or an idea, which had engrossed me for some time. Occasionally, I go to the fishing port of Aberdeen in Hong Kong in the evening just to admire such a scene as the fishing boat in the moonlight. However, with straightforward photography, there are many difficulties which cannot be conquered or overcome, when trying to produce such an effect…However, I set forth to work.

First I wanted to create a picture with the mood, the motif, and style of approach of the old Chinese masters. Therefore, I thought of inserting a foreground of pine branches, a significant symbol so well utilized in Chinese paintings, and one, which would fit well in this picture. With one negative, it would be impossible to find a spot that would be suitable arranged by Nature, so superimposing two or more negatives appeared to be the only solution.

There was next the problem of getting the branches to look as they would in moonlight. Fortunately, the use of infrared film solved this problem. To get the moonlight affecting the harbor scene I waited until sunset when the sun was quite low, purposely under exposing the negative to produce the dark, moonlight effect.

Sandwiching the two negatives produced just the effect I wanted.

There are two points it will be well to keep in mind when superimposing:

1. Be careful with crossing lines such as tree branches with horizontal lines, and so on.
2. Placement is important and a chalk mark on the ground glass will help to simplify the procedure. The foreground-negative data follows:

3 1/3 by 4 ¼ Crown Graphic with Ektar Lens; infrared film with infrared filter; exposure ½ second at f5.6; development D-76 as recommended by the manufacture. Incidentally, the camera was tilted skyward to secure a uniform dark background area.

Here’s the seascape negative data:

4 x 5 Super D Graflex with 12” Commercial Ektar lens; panachromic film exposed 1/500 second at f16 through a deep orange filter; development in D76.

The superimposed negatives were printed on Gevert K44N paper. There was no dodging, the print is unmodified throughout.