not close enough to the lens to be classified as "heavy foregrounds" nor yet far enough away to be panoramas. Buildings which are light in color and sunny street scenes fall into this division of exposures. When in doubt, take it at one twenty-fifth of a second with stop "16.” You can't miss it far, one way or another.

Push the pointer on to "32" and the object to be photographed ought to be at some distance away. This is the stop for the open road and the sunlit fields-anything between an "average view" and a "panorama."

At "64" the scale is set for the most distant of land views, beach scenes and boats in the middle distance off-shore. You will learn by costly overexposures that water views require much less light than landscapes. Photographers have an axiom that "water is as bright as the sky itself." So at "64," which is proper exposure for the most distant of land panoramas, you begin to take waterscapes.

That tiniest pin hole of a stop, at the extreme right of the scale, is never to be used except for such subjects as the open sea and snowcapped mountain tops.

There you have the theory. Apply it with common sense and you will meet with few failures. You scarcely need to be cautioned that if an object is dark in color it will require propor

tionately more exposure than the same object if it is white. Through various weathers and seasons, experience will keep teaching you how to adapt the rule to changing conditions of light. Certain handbooks and exposure meters will be of service while you are learning the classifications of subjects.

You have been told how the rule works. Press the "T" bulb again to click your shutter shut and prepare to set out on. a picture taking excursion. Set the time scale. at one twenty-fifth of a second, and leave it there. Load up a film. Replace the back of the camera. Take along a tripod. Don't forget that tripod! With that you insure yourself against getting your composition askew, or losing a good picture on account of a shaky hand.

Suppose the expedition is gunning somewhere in the backwoods. Down the stony winding road saunters one of the natives in a two-piece suit. Overalls and a hickory shirt constitute his entire outfit. He grows a beard to save himself the labor of shaving. His leathery feet scarcely feel the sharp stones of the highway. Here is a picture worth preserving, for the "cracker" type is becoming a rarity, almost extinct. Set your pointer at “8” and take his full length. If you wish a close-up of his head, set the pointer at "4."

A little farther and the road plunges into a shady valley. Under the trees ahead is a log cabin, dappled with the sunlight and the shade of dancing leaves. Use your judgment about whether such a scene requires "8" or "4." If in doubt, use "4," for the danger here is that you may under-expose.

In a clearing where the shade of the trees has little effect, stands an old water power mill. It is simply an "average view," and you can safely snap it with a "16" stop.

The friendly razorback hogs under the mail hack make a picture with a heavy foreground. They fall into the "8" classification-half in shade, half in sunlight.

The road leads us at last to a river. An oldfashioned ferry boat is making a crossing in midstream. From the hilltop where we first survey it the scene is a landscape, distant. view, and can be taken with a "32." But when you get down to the water's edge and shoot across the shining river, beware of overexposure. Stop down another notch.

Do you see now how the theory works? Give it a fair trial and you will agree that taking pictures-the mere taking, with no bothering your head about developing, printing, toning and the like—is a matter no more baffling than the simple art of learning to punch the letters on the

keyboard of a typewriter. Keep at it, never neglecting an opportunity to practice. Keep experimenting, until you can fare forth in any sort of weather and know that you will be able to bring back something printable upon your film or plate. If the day is not bright, shove your timer over to one-tenth of a second, or to onefifth.

Certain experts in photography will bitterly deride this advice to keep the time set at one twenty-fifth of a second and to vary nothing but the size of the lens aperture. They will point out-and be quite right about it-that the smaller the aperture the sharper the image, and that a more professional method of procedure is to vary the timing so as to take all pictures with small stops.

To which I can only answer that this is all well enough for the trained photographer and that in these days of my semi-professionalism I practice that same sort of thing myself. But in the beginning I was duly grateful to the man who gave me the golden. maxim of "the closer the object, the larger the stop; the more distant the object, the smaller the stop❞—a piece of advice which enabled a novice, with only one simple adjustment to worry about, to take a passably sharp, properly exposed picture. So I pass the word along to you for whatever it may be worth.

CHAPTER IV

A

FINDING A MARKET

NOSE for news, some perseverance, a typewriter and a camera have thus far been listed as the equipment most essential to success for a writer of non-fiction who sets out to trade in the periodical market as a free lance. Rather brief mention has been made of the matter of literary style. This is not because the writer of this book lacks reverence for literary craftsmanship. It is simply because, with the facts staring him in the face, he must set down his conviction that a polished style is not a matter of tremendous importance to the average editor of the average American periodical.

Journalists so clumsy that, in the graphic phrase of a short grass poet, "they seem to write with their feet," sell manuscripts with clock-like regularity to first-class markets. The magazines, like the newspapers, employ "re-write men" to take crude manuscripts to pieces, rebuild them and give them a presentable polish. The matter of prime importance to most of our American