“_Iris and the Dancing Gnome_” shows some very strange lighting. Examining Iris’s hat, we find the strongest light is falling, probably through a gap in the trees, from above and a little to the right; the shadow behind her arm, and the lighting of the fingers, confirm this. The gnome stepping up on to Iris’s knee should therefore cast a shadow upon her white dress, below and to the left; but the photograph shows no trace of any such shadow. On the other hand, the gnome is lighted mainly from the _left_; this is plainly shown on the conical cap and the right upper arm. Apart from these discrepancies, which alone are quite sufficiently damning, several other grounds for suspicion are evident. The whole photograph is much too carefully arranged to be the snapshot it is represented as being. The black legs of the gnome are contrasted against the white dress of the girl; the lighter body, face and wings are outlined against the shadows under the trees; the dark cap is brought with one edge against a wing, the better to show it up, while the other edge catches the light. A snapshot would indeed be fortunate in securing such an admirable arrangement! The same thing is very noticeable in the other three published photographs; the pictorial arrangement of the figures and background is much too good to be the result of chance, and suggests careful posing. This gnome photograph was taken under the shade of trees, we are told, at four o’clock on a September afternoon which was not sunny; an exposure of 1/50th of a second was given on “Imperial Rapid” plates, using a “Midg” quarter-plate camera. With the largest stop in this camera an exposure of at least ten times that stated, _i.e._, 1/5th of a second, would be needed to give a fair negative under these conditions; 1/2 to 1 second would probably be more correct. The photograph in question certainly shows signs of under-exposure; but under the conditions stated one would expect little more than a silhouette of the white dress and of the sky showing through the trees. Something is evidently wrong here. The gnome’s proportions are certainly not human, as are the fairies’ in the other photographs; he rather resembles the familiar “Brownie” of the Kodak advertisements. Though stepping up onto the girl’s knee, he is noticeably looking away from her, and at the camera, which is very unnatural and likely to cause him a tumble! Criticism has been directed against the girl’s hand, but this is quite a common photographic distortion of a hand held rather near the camera. In my copy, however, the elbow appears rather peculiar.