This is so much worse than when I sold a first edition "Call of the Wild" at a yard sale for $10. My parents collected books, when they died, I got to get rid of the ones I didn't want, which was most of them since I didn't have room for them. At least the lady that bought it was nice enough to point it out before she paid for it, in case I wanted to change my mind.
You know I don't want to come off rude but I would like to know what made Ansel Adams images so sought after and expensive. I've seen a few of his pictures and yes they are nice but I don't see why he is so famous.
Before you burst a blood vessel I'm genuinely curious and would like to know why. Honestly I've never really read too much about him, seen the odd show on tv mentioning him so please inform me because I've obviously missed something growing up.
I'm no authority on Ansel Adams, but I used to drool over his imagery and try to emulate it with what I shot in my slides ... and never could. Then one day I learned how much work he did in the darkroom AFTER the image was captured on film.
I remember feeling like he was 'cheating' (I shot slides, so what ya shot was what ya got) ... but his total process from composition & capture to processing & printing was comprehensive and he had a mastery over envisioning what he wanted to do in the darkroom and working to that end from the beginning. While he isn't / wasn't the only person to do so holistically ... his work is both extensive at capturing the essence of the subject for which he was impassioned, both as a photographer and naturalist and his prints yielded much beyond the norm for the era ... IIRC.
In today's 'digital darkroom' era I don't shoot slides anymore ... but I now have a better appreciation for the fact that he did all his work without the benefit of a 'Save' or 'Undo' button ... and everything was very time oriented, i.e. couldn't sit and ponder over how much dodging / burning to do with a given print while in the dark.
Essentially, he raised the bar during his era ... from which SO MANY have studied & learned from over the decades. Kind of a mix of classic, with Avante Garde technique, if you will ... a precursor / forerunner to much of what we take for granted today.
He pionered quite a few techniques and became pretty famous, attracting quite a bit of attention to the medium.
Nowadays his work might not seem like much to some, but back then it was pretty innovative and fresh.
Hes one of the photographers that pushed photography more into an art medium then just a scientific capture process. And he did it with landscapes ! Instead of half nude womens, which lets face it is easy :P
I read about him a while ago, but i have to be honest i didn't retain much. I loved his work, and that pretty much summed it up for me while i focused more onto my own work then learning who did what, learning tricks from them is more then enough for me.
Rusty Bug already gave you a great explanation about Ansel Adams. I am no expert either on Ansel Adam's work, I simply learned about him over the years and practiced his Zone System using medium format cameras.
The Zone System, not his original work but the work of Fred Archer if memory does not fail me, made him very popular among b&w photographers all over the world. As you most probably know, the Zone System consisted in exposing a negative according to "zones" for optimal development and eventually printing. Today it looks like nothing due to modern technology but at the time, based on the resources photographers had available to them, it was a great innovation. We are talking about the early 40's.
He actually made Tri-X famous exposing the negative at a predetermined ISO for his camera and then developing in HC-110 development solution for a period of time derived from exhaustive previous testings. The results were excellent tonalities that reproduced in the darkroom as magic on fiber base paper. Like Csae put it "nowadays his work might not seem like much to some, but back then it was pretty innovative and fresh."
Over the years, many photographers have tried to imitate Ansel Adams photographs but nobody has been able to come close to those tonalities he reproduced in his work. Even when he made a mistake, like on his badly underexposed "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" his darkroom artistry was able to salvage the negative and still come up with an outstanding print. The way he illustrated the American South West made him one of the best known landscape photographers of that era.
In spite of modern technology and the abundance of landscape photographers, his work sells as well as ever before and the exhibition of his photographs at museums and art stores continues to attract the public.
Look very carefully to any of his work. Perhaps you will be able to discover the tonalities this man was able to achieve on his prints at the time with the limited resources available then to photographers.
He was and will continue to be the master of b&w landscape photography.
Thank you for the excellent comments, I'm going to have to find if there is a travelling gallery showcasing his work, I have to see his stuff up close. Aside from vision, seems to me he was sort of Photoshop, NX2, and DPP all rolled together from what i gather.
This whole subject has now got me thinking about the digital age, for you B&W artists do you set your camera up specially to shoot B&W's or is it merely just a matter at post processing time, " oh that would look good in mono, now where is that conversion button"?
Or do you actually change the camera setting to reflect a mono image right out of the gate, are the results the same?
You should check out his prints at exhibition when you get the chance. He was a master of his craft, and you can only get an appreciation for his skill and his efforts when you view an original print (in my opinion). A 200x300 pixel jpeg image on your computer monitor is no way to judge his work.
aubsxc wrote:
You should check out his prints at exhibition when you get the chance. He was a master of his craft, and you can only get an appreciation for his skill and his efforts when you view an original print (in my opinion). A 200x300 pixel jpeg image on your computer monitor is no way to judge his work.
+1
When you actually see one of his prints up close, it is jaw dropping amazing! To Shasta, it isn't just that he had absolute technical mastery of his craft (as was available at the time), it is even more that he saw and was able to capture his vision. Without a doubt modern photography would not be what it is today without Adams.
Let me add to the comments and say that you really need to see his actual prints to understand the fuss. I've been a lifelong fan, and have a bunch of his authorized books and even those are mere shadows of what's in his prints. Seeing his work in person changed the way I think about the photographic process as well as the goals of landscape photography. And until you get the opportunity to see a gallery, pick up his autobiography, "The Negative" or "The Print" (parts 2 and 3 respectively of his how to series), or "Examples: The making of 40 Photographs". "400 Photographs" is fun too.
As for your comment that he was PS and NX2 rolled into one, well his Zone system was in many ways much more than that. His process started at the end (the print) and stepped back through each step in the photographic chain, looking at what was needed to get the final print he envisioned while standing out there in the field. So, if the print needed X paper to achieve Y contrast and Z density, that meant that the neg needed to have A range and to get that it would need to be developed in B process, and that means using C film and in addition to all that while shooting he needed to do 1, 2 and 3 so that the development would work. Even more, each of these steps were carefully tested so that he knew precisely what each variable affected and how best to control it and to counterbalance any errors he could not remove. I've heard it said that the best way to place Ansel in perspective is to think of him as the greatest photographic printer ever - bar none - coupled with one of the top 5 best landscape shooters ever. No one else is even close to that combination.
As papi mentioned, Ansel didn't invent the Zone system, but he is probably noted as being the most prolific master at using it ... at the very minimum he was the 'break out' / 'next level' person that made it 'famous'. Remembering that photography has only been a process for a couple hundred years and an art form for about half that, Ansel did things with film / print process that no one else could do, even when taught to do it. And as Todd mentioned, his darkroom / printing mastery is truly what set him apart (even more so than his camera work).
In that regard he is to photography as Michaelangelo is to sculpture (imo)... nobody else compared (many have tried, but none can truly do as he did) as there is something innate about his mind, knowledge, experience and vision combined that simply will not be replicated, despite others having developed their own technical mastery and ability to produce stunning Ansel-like work. Today, many people may be able to sculpt another "David" ... but it won't be the same as Michaelangelo's ... and there will never truly be another Michaelangelo ... or Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Picasso, etc. ... so it is with Ansel.
On a different note ... regarding the article and the negatives ... even if they truly are Ansel's negatives ... the real value of Adams' work was in the darkroom with his personal vision. Without Ansel doing the printing ... you CAN'T get / make an Ansel print.
The negatives are only HALF (sort of) of what it took to produce an Adams print. As such, they're value is largely limited as a piece of history (imo) ... any prints made from them are just somebody else's work using something they didn't even do. The only thing that would remotely add any real value (imo) would be if someone he personally mentored were to do the printing ... but sadly still, not the same.
Granted, I may still like to have a print from Ansel's negatives, but it's not the same ... just like I have a Renoir (reproduction) that my wife enjoys very much, but it's not a Renoir ... because RENOIR only painted it ONCE.
With today's world of digital / mass reproduction ... for many of us, it's hard to understand / appreciate the uniqueness of an individual print being hand crafted in the darkroom ... and there being no possible way to perfectly replicate it when you produce the next print ... no two are ever exactly the same, so without Ansel's touch ... it can be an awesome pic ... but it'll never be an Ansel print.
Shasta wrote:
This whole subject has now got me thinking about the digital age, for you B&W artists do you set your camera up specially to shoot B&W's or is it merely just a matter at post processing time, " oh that would look good in mono, now where is that conversion button"?
Or do you actually change the camera setting to reflect a mono image right out of the gate, are the results the same?
I shoot in RAW so when I do my post processing I'm starting with a "digital negative". I then process it in CS2 or maybe DPP and then CS2, during which I convert it to B&W. I have no "conversion button" and the method and details of the conversion will vary from photo to photo. I do have "wet" darkroom experience and perhaps that helped me initially when I first started shooting digital but I don't consider it a necessary requirement for making good B&W photos in the digital darkroom.
RustyBug wrote:
On a different note ... regarding the article and the negatives ... even if they truly are Ansel's negatives ... the real value of Adams' work was in the darkroom with his personal vision. Without Ansel doing the printing ... you CAN'T get / make an Ansel print.
The negatives are only HALF (sort of) of what it took to produce an Adams print. As such, they're value is largely limited as a piece of history (imo) ... any prints made from them are just somebody else's work using something they didn't even do. The only thing that would remotely add any real value (imo) would be if someone he personally mentored were to do the printing ... but sadly still, not the same.
Granted, I may still like to have a print from Ansel's negatives, but it's not the same ... just like I have a Renoir (reproduction) that my wife enjoys very much, but it's not a Renoir ... because RENOIR only painted it ONCE.
With today's world of digital / mass reproduction ... for many of us, it's hard to understand / appreciate the uniqueness of an individual print being hand crafted in the darkroom ... and there being no possible way to perfectly replicate it when you produce the next print ... no two are ever exactly the same, so without Ansel's touch ... it can be an awesome pic ... but it'll never be an Ansel print....Show more →
Definitely a big +1
As I was reading the article in today paper I kept thinking about his darkroom skills and how many hours I spent in my college darkroom trying to teach myself those skills. And then I thought about a post and big debate in the Wedding Forum about making RAW files available to clients. And then I read your post and it's pretty much exactly what I was thinking. The content is just the first part of an image. The second part comes in post.
Coming from a staunch chrome shooter who had disdain for the darkroom as 'cheating' for those who couldn't get it right 'in camera' (Oh, the ignorance of my youth ) ...
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