Vignette Assignment

This is an old techniques used by portrait photographers in the 1940's to reduce the background a concentrate attention on the subject of the photo.  The butterfly was just an ordinary shot until it was masked into a Vignette.

To make a vignette the photographer uses an opaque MASK between the enlarger lens and the photo paper when making a print.  This mask can be made from a torn hold in a piece of cardboard or it can be a special tool for this purpose found in our photo lab.  The key, is to keep the mask close to the lens so that it does not show up as a sharp cut off in  the subject, but instead becomes a smooth transition.