A composite photograph made from two separate negatives, Sunshine and Rain, which dates to 1896, is explained from a technical viewpoint in the author’s book Practical Pictorial Photography, (Part 1) first published in 1898. From the chapter “Improving on Nature”, Alfred Horsley Hinton writes:

I will give one more example, and rather an extreme one. Here are a series of four illustrations, and the story of them is as follows.

One of the wide marsh lands of Suffolk; a group of trees just budding into earliest spring foliage; brown, withered grass underfoot, sprinkled with the new springing blades of green; a clear grey-blue sky on the afternoon of an April day, which lighted up the narrow stream of water coming down to my feet. The simplicity of the Composition pleased me. It was very bright, very full of glowing afternoon light-the rather quaint, straggling trees possessed something of poetry about them; and so two plates were exposed, one with what I judged to be about correct time, the other with about three times the exposure.

Then a long tramp home by the river wall and across some miles of the same barren country, wondering the while what I would do with my tree picture.

It was a day or two after that I experienced in the same neighbourhood a very rough afternoon. Gusts of wind, pitiless rain, interspersed with brilliant intervals when the sun’s rays pierced the clouds, glancing here and there in fitful patches of light, and anon bathing all the distance in haze as the rain-soaked earth exhaled its moisture in the moments of warmth. The effect out on the dreary marsh land was very grand. It was one of nature’s most appealing moods as the weird, weather-beaten trees bent and writhed under the squall, and then glistened and seemed to laugh again as the drift of sunshine passed.

I thought about it a good deal. I developed those negatives of trees taken under such different climatic conditions, half hoping that by some miracle the recollection of the day of rain, storm, and sunshine might appear so with the second negative I kept the whole very thin, restraining density in the high lights, thinking that perhaps I might do something with it of which I had as yet only a half formed plan.

It was a month or so later that I photographed some clouds in another district, when the dark bank of shadow was riven here and there by shafts of light from the sun behind; and afterwards I bethought me to wed one of these to my trees—it suited fairly well; but then came back the old memory of the sunshine and rain, and with it the desire to express by means of these two negatives some of my impression.

It merely meant shading one part, stopping back another, accentuating the shafts of descending sunshine by strips of paper, restraining printing to get something of the idea of the luminous haze which veiled the distance, yet not so much as to prevent the effect of dark rain-clouds and shadows drifting close to earth in the right-hand distance. Keeping a good deal of the foreground dark, I was able to accentuate the light in the patch of water in the immediate front; and so on, dodging, controlling, making three or four prints in succession, until, after several trials, I had to be content with the one here reproduced, and which I called “Sunshine and Rain.” A good deal has been lost in the reproduction, but I hope it may serve to suggest how very far the photographer is from being compelled to copy only that which is before him. By means of photography he may not, as the painter can, be able to introduce objects which were not present, but he can introduce effects which may express ideas more successfully than the same man could with brush or pencil, lacking as he may the especial aptitude for their use.  (pp. 79-83)

✻       ✻      ✻      ✻     ✻

Alfred Horsley Hinton: 1863-1908

Alfred Horsley Hinton was an English landscape photographer, best known for his work in the pictorialist movement in the 1890s and early 1900s. As an original member of the Linked Ring and editor of The Amateur Photographer, he was one of the movement’s staunchest advocates. Hinton wrote nearly a dozen books on photographic technique, and his photographs were exhibited at expositions throughout Europe and North America.

Hinton was born in London in 1863. He attended art school with the hopes of becoming a painter, and became proficient in oil, watercolors, and black-and-white drawing. By 1882, he had discovered photography, and was hired as editor of the Photographic Art Journal in 1887. Hinton briefly worked for a company in Blackfriars selling photographic equipment before taking over a branch portrait studio of Ralph W. Robinson in Guildford in 1891. In 1893, he was hired as editor of The Amateur Photographer, a position he retained for the rest of his life.

During the late 1880s, Hinton became one of a growing number of photographers who believed that photography should be considered a form of high art, a movement that became known as pictorialism. Pictorialism, according to Hinton, employed “the image of concrete things to create abstract ideas.” He exhibited several photographs at an early-1890s Leeds exposition described by his contemporary, Alexander Keighley, as the first pictorialist exposition, and was one of the original members of the Linked Ring, an organisation formed in 1892 to promote photography as a fine art.

Hinton helped organise the Photographic Salon in 1893, and became the primary English correspondent for the Bulletin of the French pictorialist group, the Photo Club of Paris. A poll conducted by Photographic Life in 1897 found Hinton to be the most popular photographer-exhibiter.

Hinton’s staunch defence of pictorialism gained him numerous enemies. His attempt to join the Royal Photographic Society touched off a fierce debate among the readers of the British Journal of Photography, with numerous letters written both in support of his membership and against it. Hinton was a member of the Royal Photographic Society between 1889 and 1893. He continued his defence of pictorialism into the following century, and was unimpressed with the rise of the “American School,” which included photographers such as Edward Steichen (Steichen once referred to Hinton as a “slimy snake”).

During the early 1900s, Hinton was a regular contributor to the London Times, The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Graphic, and the Yorkshire Post, and was frequently called upon to judge photo contests. In 1904, he oversaw the British photographic exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair, and he spent his last years writing manuals (“Little Books”) to teach photographers basic techniques. In February 1908, he fell ill while returning from a trip to the Scottish Photographic Salon in Aberdeen, and died at his home in Woodford Green. The Royal Photographic Society held an exclusive exhibit of Hinton’s work in April 1908. -Wikipedia (2024)

The Linked Ring

Alfred Horsley Hinton was a founder member on 27 May, 1892. His Pseudonym was Comptroller of the Exchequer. He was a center link for periods in 1892, 1898, 1900 and 1907. He was severed upon his death on 8 April, 1908.  (1.)

1. The Linked Ring:The Secession in Photography 1892-1910, Margaret Harker: 1979, p. 184