Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

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Archive 2012 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

RustyBug

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p.1 #1 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

X-posting ... but hopefully worthy.

Mitchell Museum @ Cedarhurst in Mount Vernon, IL (75 miles east of St. Louis on I-64) will be exhibiting approximately 70 of Ansel Adams prints that he personally printed for his daughter's private collection. The exhibit opens on February 25, 2012 ... I'll be there.

If you've ever wanted to see Adams' work up close & personal, this should be one not to miss.
Mitchell Museum is a smaller, intimate museum that should be excellent for viewing this very personal collection.

Since I live in Mt. Vernon, it seems phenomenal to me that this collection will be coming here. I'm looking forward to meeting some fellow FM'ers, so be sure and let me know if you're coming to view this rare & personal collection. I'm sure I'll be there more than once for this one.

http://www.cedarhurst.org/index.php?mact=Calendar,cntnt01,default,0&cntnt01year=2012&cntnt01month=2&cntnt01event_id=128399&cntnt01display=event&cntnt01date=&cntnt01lang=en_US&cntnt01returnid=52

Jan 23, 2012 at 05:38 PM

dmacmillan
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p.1 #2 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

"It is one of his Museum Sets, a portfolio he conceived in the 1970s as the best images of his career."

I don't know if it is the very same prints, but last year the Booth Western Museum in Cartersville, GA had an exhibit of prints from his Museum Sets portfolio.

It's a real treat to see photographs of his iconic work that he printed. You really can't fully appreciate his work without seeing actual prints.

Be aware, though, that many of the prints he made in the 1970's are very different from earlier prints made from the same negatives. The later prints tended to be darker and much more contrasty. I miss the extended tonality of the earlier prints, which I have also seen. I think some of the more contrasty prints negate what he was trying to accomplish using the techniques he codified in the Zone System.

Jan 23, 2012 at 06:35 PM

RustyBug

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p.1 #3 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

+1 @ that each print may have its own "handcrafted" signature from one period vs. another ... and that may even reflect a bit of his daughter's eye/preference as he printed them for her personal collection. Even if it does differ (or resemble) from his earlier stuff a bit, the additional aspect that these are part of the family's personal printings brings another element to it. When I spoke with the museum about it, they too felt the significance of THIS collection from his daughter was meritable ... although that'll likely go relatively unappreciated by the public at large.

The one thing about Adams that resonates in my mind is an image of him doing a "markup" to a print to reflect his "game plan" for an image. It took me a while (in my youth) to get past the sooc/manipulation thing, since I worked so very hard at in-camera excellence for my chromes ... but that was then. In that regard, I'm still looking forward to studying his works "up close & personal" ... whichever 'era' these will be reflective of, I plan to soak it in.

Jan 23, 2012 at 07:09 PM

cgardner
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p.1 #4 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

I'm a no apologies Adam's fanboy having learned to make zone system prints using his books soon after getting my first camera.

Adam's original prints are amazing close-up, in person, on your desk....

Back in the early 80s when I was production manager of USIA's Manila publishing center one of the local staff who checked in job materials send from HQ in Washington came in with one of the big shipping cases we use and said, "There's a note on this saying these photos are valuable, where shall still I put them?" I looked at the shipment manifest, saw Ansel Adams prints, smiled ear-to-ear and said, "You can leave them right here".

Topic, a magazine we printed and shipped to Africa in English and French, was doing a story on Adams using about a dozen of his most famous shots. My challenge was to do them justice in their reproduction on a high speed web press on less than gallery quality paper stock. previously worked at National Geographic where my job was making halftones, duo-tones and tri-tones (sepia created on a 4/C press using CYMK) and while working there had reproduced Edward Curtis photos from an original set Geographic had in its library for a book on Native Americans. I used similar techniques to reproduce Adams prints, combining to halftones one with the shadow detail and the other with the highlight detail — much the same way HDR is done in Photoshop today — to create a double black duotone printed on press with a double hit of PMS Black producing much greater ink density and more shadow detail than a normally produced halftone in a magazine has. They turned out as well or better than any other reproduction in book or magazine format I've seen since.

The idea of "losing" a few of the prints crossed my mind, but all that I have are memories of working with them a set of Cromalin proofs of the duotones in the sizes used in the magazine I filed away somewhere.

Jan 23, 2012 at 07:30 PM

RustyBug

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p.1 #5 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

cgardner wrote:
I'm a no apologies Adam's fanboy having learned to make zone system prints using his books soon after getting my first camera.

While I enjoyed his images ... I was totally P.O.'d when I learned how much he "cheated" in the darkroom ... it took me quite a few years to come to understand it isn't about the camera or technique, but the relationship between the image and the viewer and the message that one is trying to successfully convey.

But ... it should be undestood that as a young sailor traveling around the world, I did not have access to darkroom facilities. Shooting color negatives always sucked because the "one hour lab" (city/country of choice) could never get it right when I did anything that wasn't "average" ... only good/average as the 'computer' analyzed the negative.

Hence, I shot chromes where I was able to reduce the variable of the lab printing for "average" (which I would need to get them to correct)... and had all of my control "in-camera" for "what ya shot, was what ya got".

Fast forward a few decades and the "digital darkroom" is now available to me, where it wasn't before ... Adams' (et al) work takes on a different perspective. Not that Adams himself is the "do all, end all" ... but it certainly represents (and incorporates) much that is very worthy to the craft. Whether one is a fan-boy or not, to me his significance to the craft is the amount of THOUGHT he put into his image making. Sure, we can push a "preset" that someoone programmed to emulate technique XYZ, HDR, etc. ... but it is the amount of study, care, thought and control that went into his images individually that (imo) represents his mastery of control in image making.

Jan 23, 2012 at 08:07 PM

AuntiPode

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p.1 #6 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

One spring in the early 1980's I drove up Highway one on vacation. I stopped for a night in Carmel. I strolled around the small business district and found a gallery that had a small Ansel Adams print in the window for sale. It was one I'd never seen in a book or other source. It wasn't especially remarkable, except that it was signed by Adams and had his quality. The price, if I recall correctly was something around $800. I feared if I bought it I might not have enough credit left on my card to make it back. By the time the gallery opened in the morning I was already back on the road. Worst financial and artistic blunder of my life.

Jan 23, 2012 at 08:25 PM

dmacmillan
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p.1 #7 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

AuntiPode wrote:
Worst financial and artistic blunder of my life.
I had a similar experience in a gallery at Yosemite. I passed up a chance to buy "Moonrise at Hernandez" for $300.

Jan 23, 2012 at 08:31 PM

dmacmillan
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p.1 #8 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

RustyBug wrote:
Hence, I shot chromes...

That made me think of when I was a teenager and bought my first 35mm camera. I shot a lot more slide film than B&W. I'm glad I did, it taught me two valuable lessons.

The first was accurate exposure. I was shooting both Kodachrome and Ektachrome and learned fast the difference between almost correct exposure and correct exposure. I also started to bracket important shots, although I didn't have enough money to shoot willy-nilly.

The second was careful composition. With slides, you learn quickly to compose in the camera. I rarely cropped when printing. I still don't crop much.

Jan 23, 2012 at 08:50 PM

cgardner
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p.1 #9 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

That's why we all wind up here in the Internet with different points of view — which seem fluctuate for some. Just a few month ago and more than once before Doug suggested that any mention of ol' Ansel was "jumping the shark" or the photographic equivalent of Godwin's Law.

Working with B&W in the darkroom fitting negative to paper range is part of what made quite obvious the problem with color negative wasn't that the lab didn't get it right but that it couldn't fit 8 -12 stops of scene detail on the color paper in the same way it had been done routinely with B&W prints with development and different paper types. See the end of "strobist" thread over on Lighting where I just explained that.

With the lab out of the equation with Ektachome you quickly came to the realization that the problem wasn't the lab it was the scene range and lowered your expectations of what the recording medium actually do. For example exposing backlit subjects at Shady 5.6 instead of expecting everything to be rendered more or less as seen by eye at Sunny 16 as was possible with the longer range B&W prints: A #2 B&W print paper had a 10 stop range, a color print in the 70s about 5 stops and a half-life in direct sun of about 5 weeks before it faded.

With the ZS you could take an overcast day shot and make it normal by changing film development. The same thing can be done in PS with the middle slider...

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Before (top) and After (after)

This image is copyrighted by the owner

But unlike B&W you can't record the full range at capture because the sensor range is too short, and if you try to lighten what the sensor did record at some point only the noise is there and is amplified...

One solution, while not perfect is expose the sunny parts under clipping on a foreground subject as above in the first shot on Zone 9 - white below specular clipping (which is Zone 10) then using on axis fill flash to first raise the shadows to Zone 1 detail, then a second off axis flash to place the highlights in front on Zone 8 which winds up looking perceptually normal in a backlit scene...

... if you don't see too much of the background under exposed beyond the range of the flash...

I use the same "pre-visualization" process of thinking in terms of tonal zone or values in the scene and print that Adams introduced me, and the same approach for process control. But controlling both color film and digital with their fixed and often less than scene ranges required me to master a new set of tools: 2 and sometimes more flashes mixed with ambient or used separately.

What I try to make photographers today understand is that before Photoshop can manipulate an outdoor scene and produce results like Adams did in the B&W era one must first find ways to capture the same range of scene detail using either flash or HDR whenever scene range exceeds sensor.

You will know when scene exceeds sensor by: 1) first exposing Zone 9 scene content 1/3 stop below clipping, then 2) look at the left side of the histogram. If the left side is running off it's time for HDR or flash, as the situation allows, to get the same range Adams did. If like in the overcast shot above it's not running off the left side, then move the middle slider to "normalize" the contrast to taste.

If the left side of the histogram is running off after exposing per the clipping warning keeping Zone 9 whites 1/3 stop below per camera warning, you can determine how many stops of shadows are being lost by slowing shutter (so as not to change DOF) until the left side stops running off. Usually its about 2-3 stops to records shadows above noise. Combine the first and last shots with an HDR application and you have the full range with about 3 stops in the middle were the shadow and highlight exposures overlap.

Try shooting exposing to the right on a tripod, slow shutter 3 stops and take another shot. Then by hand start with the first shot and select all > copy > paste in the second on a new layer. Add a black mask, then selectively paint white / erase the mask where you want more shadow detail. It HDR but with selective local control of what you lighten. By choosing to lighted just the focal point you can create a perceptual vignette that is subliminal.

Jan 23, 2012 at 09:03 PM

AuntiPode

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p.1 #10 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

I want a camera with a sensor that has more dynamic range. Wish I could afford MF.

Jan 23, 2012 at 09:59 PM

RustyBug

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p.1 #11 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

dmacmillan wrote:
RustyBug wrote:
Hence, I shot chromes...

That made me think of when I was a teenager and bought my first 35mm camera. I shot a lot more slide film than B&W. I'm glad I did, it taught me two valuable lessons.

The first was accurate exposure. I was shooting both Kodachrome and Ektachrome and learned fast the difference between almost correct exposure and correct exposure. I also started to bracket important shots, although I didn't have enough money to shoot willy-nilly.

The second was careful composition. With slides, you learn quickly to compose in the camera. I rarely cropped when printing. I still don't crop much.

+1

Only someone who actually shot chromes would know the true significance of these points ... and they are very significant. Good to know you can appreciate where I come from.

Jan 23, 2012 at 10:07 PM

RustyBug

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p.1 #12 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

AuntiPode wrote:
I want a camera with a sensor that has more dynamic range. Wish I could afford MF.

I want one that has the same dynamic range and ISO capability as my eye.

Jan 23, 2012 at 10:13 PM

AuntiPode

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p.1 #13 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

I'd like a little more, actually.

Jan 23, 2012 at 10:19 PM

Doug C
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p.1 #14 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

Hey RustyBug, thanks so much for pointing this out. Fellow Mt Vernonite FMer here, and I'll be sure to check this out!

Jan 24, 2012 at 03:28 AM

cgardner
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p.1 #15 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

My first experience with Ektachome was during the last term of my freshman year of college living on a farm in Ferryville, Wisconsin for 16 weeks documenting an off campus project. I had Tri-X in one Nikon F body, Ektachrome in another, and a Honeywell 1° spot meter which made metering for the highlights simple so I didn't have many exposure problems. To make B&W prints I created a darkroom in the cellar using my Dad's old enlarger I brought along. The school paid for supplies and the processing of the Ektachrome. The only downside was it also wound up with most of the slides.

National Geographic bought Kodachome by the rail car load. The color lab would test various batches, pick the best the by all of it and store it in big freezers at an annex. I didn't have a darkroom at the time so I shot Kodachrome almost color exclusively for several years. One of the fringe benefits of working in the lab was there was always a few rolls available for "testing"

.

The difference between the two was Ektachrome had the dyes in the film that allowed an amateur to process it themselves. Kodachrome was a dye transfer process in which the dyes were coupled to the film during the processing, which if memory serves had about 14 separate steps. That's why it was sold with pre-paid processing mailers and so few places processed it. Incoming film from the NG photographers in the field would be split into two batches with one sent to Rochester and the other to a processing plant in MD Kodak built primarily to service NG. The photographers used so much during an assignment a problem they often had was convincing customs officials who couldn't believe one person could use so much they weren't going to sell it.

In the 80s after a couple disasters with trying to get my underwater shots of Ektachrome processed in Manila I switched to color negatives. Transparencies weren't widely used there so the lab had processed it in tanks and screwed it up. Negatives were machine processed and more consistent in terms of QC. The flooding of my u/w strobe ended my u/w shooting in the early 90s. HV electricity combined with saltwater at 60ft makes a very loud noise. I did a bit of color printing myself at home in the late 80s but decided it was a job better left to the lab.

Jan 24, 2012 at 04:06 AM

RustyBug

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p.1 #16 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

Hey Doug ... good to hear that there's another FM'er around. Any others that you know of nearby?

Jan 24, 2012 at 06:01 AM

Bob Jarman
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p.1 #17 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

Kent,

More than several years ago, I subscribed to the Time Life Photography series. One book of the series, The Print, suffers from heavy use. Inspired and armed with a Pentax Spotmeter II, I set out to master the Zone System. Nearly forty years later, the quest continues albeit with different gear.

Also, as a bonus, I was able to purchase a signed copy of Adams' Yosemite and The Range of Light, (I think the title is correct) comprised of more of his iconic images. It resides somewhere on a shelf. It would be good to study that again...hopefully I have acquired some insight over the years and can learn more from the experience.

I'm envious - enjoy the show and let us know your thoughts.

Bob

Jan 24, 2012 at 01:39 PM

RustyBug

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p.1 #18 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

Bob Jarman wrote:
let us know your thoughts.

Ya know ... I've been pretty shy & conservative about sharing my thoughts up till now

... you may have just opened Pandora's Box.

Seriously though, I will certainly do that (as if it would be any other way), but I do truly do hope that others will be able to do so as well.

But, as to envious ... I could reciprocate the envy for your signed copy.

Jan 24, 2012 at 02:21 PM

dmacmillan
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p.1 #19 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

Bob Jarman wrote:
Also, as a bonus, I was able to purchase a signed copy of Adams' Yosemite and The Range of Light, (I think the title is correct) comprised of more of his iconic images.

That reminds me, I have a card with his autograph stored. I need to take it out and frame it.

Jan 24, 2012 at 03:26 PM

RustyBug

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p.1 #20 · Ansel Adams Exhibit Coming To The Midwest

Update ... On April 28, Dr. Michael Adams (son of Ansel) will be speaking at the exhibit. I was in the know @ this, but couldn't say anything until it was confirmed, official and released.

Mitchell Museum is a small venue compared with the likes of Chicago, NY, Atlanta, LA, etc. It should have an 'intimate' feel to it that you wouldn't get in the larger venues. Hope you can make it.

Feb 16, 2012 at 03:46 AM

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