Re: How Many Members Still Print Their Own Photography?
anthonygh wrote:
For what it is worth...I went to an Ansel Adams exhibition in London some years back....and looked at a lot of original prints.
Leaving aside the aesthetic qualities....I had my Canon G10 with me (still my take anywhere camera as it fits in my pocket) and looking at the quality of the exhibition prints (if judged on sharpness and tonal range)...the G10 files via my A3+ Epson printer produced better prints in some cases. I was quite surprised as he has a reputation for technical expertise.
With the advances in software, printers and papers...the gap has probably increased.
I think that modern photographers who have only used digital gear would be surprised to see prints my the “masters.”
Ansel’s prints are (mostly) spectacular for the time in which he made them, but a large Adams’ prints is unlikely to be as sharp in many cases as what we can get from current digital cameras. Our notions of how sharp (and large) prints should be has changed quite a bit.
(Subjectively, and speaking as someone who appreciates Adams’ work quite a bit…if Adams produced his work today it would likely not impress viewers nearly the way it did back when he was creating it. At that time, few photographers were hauling the kind of gear necessary to make those photographs into the places he went, and few were as attentive to all of the ins and outs of exposure, film processing, and the techniques of printing.
And… not every Ansel image or print was equally good. (He knew this, hence his famous statement about — to paraphrase — 12 excellent images a year being a good crop.) A story: A friend worked with Adams and was among those who had an association with him during his last years. My friend has prints by quite a few outstanding photographers, including some by Ansel. I was at his house once and he brought out some prints including one of Ansel’s of a lighter tree in front of a background of darker trees. (There’s a pretty famous one that fits this description, but this was a different one I had not previously seen.)
It was not exactly a great print. The highlighted foreground tree did not really stand out or glow, and the shadows in the background forest were blocked and there was no detail there. I wasn’t quite sure what to say when to my friend about the print, but I decided to be courageous and gently share my observation. His response was, more or less, “I’m glad to hear that. I thought it was just me.”
One more thing. About his technical expertise, quite a bit of that comes in ways that are not obvious to viewers, who have seen his style of prints and don’t understand just how complicated it was to get them to look that way they do. One of the most obvious examples is “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico,” perhaps his most famous (and expensive!) print. Over that attractive foreground looms a deep black sky with bright, glowing clouds in places and a moon.
If you poke around online you can find copies of the contact print of the negative he exposed. It looks almost nothing like the print! Turning that negative into the print we all know was a pretty amazing show of photographic technical skill, not to mention vision.
May 24, 2026 at 03:37 PM
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