Ansel Adams Film and Method

braxus · Sep 1, 2020

Looking at a lot of pictures from the famous photographer, what B&W film was his film of choice? And was it 4x5 or 8x10 mostly? And how did he get those really dark skies in many of his pictures? Was it filtration (how on large format), or was it just film choice?

reddesert · Sep 1, 2020

Old St. Ansel wrote entire books about photographic methods, which are worth reading even if one doesn't aspire to making his kinds of photographs. But especially relevant here is that he wrote an entire book called "Examples" with mini-essays on how he made each of 40 photographs. IIRC, he does talk about film, filters, etc but what's useful about these essays is that he talks about visualization and aesthetic choices that were key to making the picture come out as he intended. (Versus, how useful is it to know now if he made a photo on Royal-X Pan? Perhaps not very.) https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/examp...el-adams/265525/#isbn=082121750X&idiq=4790422

As for the skies, some combination of clear and dry skies in the Southwest, yellow filters, and careful darkroom work. Often a "straight" print doesn't look that much like his final versions. "Moonrise: Hernandez" is a famous example of this, as the sky in the straight print comes out a lot lighter than he saw it at the time or envisioned on paper, so it was burned in a lot. Filtration on large format is like on any other format, you put a filter in front of the lens.

Randy Stewart · Sep 1, 2020

The films available to Adams are not around today, and there aren't many (any?) which are similar. Perhaps, Kodak Super XX, The reason for this is fairly clear.l Adams shot mostly 8x10 inch negatives which might be contact printed or enlarged by a factor of 5x, Grain and sharpness was not much of a consideration, compared to 35mm, today being enlarged by 10x or more. Those darkened skies were the result of filters (he was big on Wratten G - orange), plus a burn down in the darkroom perhaps. In the last 10 years of his life, he used Hasselblad a lot. He used mostly Kodak Panatomic-X, a very slow, fine grained film, in medium format.

Donald Qualls · Sep 2, 2020

Some of his earlier work, including some true classics like one of Half Dome, were shot on glass plates.

Paul Howell · Sep 2, 2020

AA shot with many different formats, 35mm, 6X6, 4X5, 5X7 and 8X10, I don't recall see any image taken larger than 8X10, with the bulk of his work shot on sheet film. As noted by Donald Qualls over his lifetime he shot on glass plates, he shot some ortho film and many different pan films, used many different developers and printed on many different papers, sone images were reprinted on different papers. He shot some like Half Dome with a red filter which blocks blue and green light darkening the sky. He used a yellow filter to separate the clouds in a landscape while lighting the foliage. Using a yellow, orange or red absorbs blue and green and like the sky will darken foliage. You can find his 3 classic books, the Camera, the Negative, and The Print used online for not much money to get a sense of his work method which is build around the Zone System.

Luckless · Sep 2, 2020

Paul Howell said:
AA shot with many different formats, 35mm, 6X6, 4X5, 5X7 and 8X10,

I've seen work of his specifically referenced as having been taken on medium and large format film, and I've seen photos of him carrying a 35mm camera, but I honestly can't remember seeing any photo of his directly referenced as having been taken on a 35mm.

Is there any catalogue or listing that breaks his work down by camera?

But I really should pick up a copy of Examples.

Donald Qualls · Sep 2, 2020

In The Print there are a couple candid portraits he shot with a Leica. Don't recall what film he used for those, thoughj.

BTW, he also did some (largely forgotten) color work, most notably the one time he visited Hawaii. IIRC, it was done in 4x5 and required a slight modification of the Zone System.

Mainecoonmaniac · Sep 2, 2020

braxus said:
Looking at a lot of pictures from the famous photographer, what B&W film was his film of choice? And was it 4x5 or 8x10 mostly? And how did he get those really dark skies in many of his pictures? Was it filtration (how on large format), or was it just film choice?

Take a look a at his book The Negative. He used photographic materials that was available to him at that time. With that said, I think it's his artistry, not materials that made his images. He had a vision in his head of a scene, then used techniques and materials to try to match what he saw in his mind. I've been photographing for over 30 years and I've seen admirers of Ansel Adams get too wrapped up in the Zone System, film and paper and forget about artistry. Definitely get the craft down to serve art. That's my 2¢ worth.

Vaughn · Sep 2, 2020

Donald Qualls said:
...BTW, he also did some (largely forgotten) color work, most notably the one time he visited Hawaii. IIRC, it was done in 4x5 and required a slight modification of the Zone System.

And a lot of 8x10 elsewhere -- Kodak gave him a bunch of film to try out. Some of his B&W work have a color transparency taken w/o moving the camera very far, such as the 1958 image on the cover of AA in Color of Monument Valley. Kodak (via AA no doubt) gave some color film to EW, too -- I have seen reproductions of the results EW had using color film for his close-up of shells, a couple images of Pt. Lobos and a waterfront scene. (Pictures That Talk, U.S.Camera 1959).

Juan Valdenebro · Sep 2, 2020

Ansel Adams' film and method?
Which film or camera he used was not important... His method was to be a painter with photographic materials in the darkroom, to make prints vastly different from negatives and from reality, prints that were surprising on their surface and not in their content or human condition expression.
From a formal, historical point of view, his photography and that of the f/64 group is considered the last immature period before maturity of the photographic media, when pictorialism and composition were finally understood as worries that for long came from painting and were not a real part of what's truly photographic, when Frank and Winogrand and the New Documents exhibition took place in the 50's and 60's. Of course Ansel Adams was a good person. That's how I was taught in Europe. Not trying to offend anyone: loving natural parks is fine, but being a relevant photographer is fine too. To each their own... Just answering the question: his system, no matter the film used, was the local contrast novelty on the surface.

Vaughn · Sep 2, 2020

Juan, you left light and beauty out of your equation. Always relevant, but as you said, to each their own. We need variety.

Paul Howell · Sep 2, 2020

Donald Qualls said:
In The Print there are a couple candid portraits he shot with a Leica. Don't recall what film he used for those, thoughj.

BTW, he also did some (largely forgotten) color work, most notably the one time he visited Hawaii. IIRC, it was done in 4x5 and required a slight modification of the Zone System.

I can think of a couple, most famous is his image of Georgia O'keeffe taken with a Contax.

Zathras · Sep 2, 2020

Paul Howell said:
I can think of a couple, most famous is his image of Georgia O'keeffe taken with a Contax.

View attachment 253749

I saw a large print of that at an exhibit a few years back and I was amazed at the result what he was able to get from a 35mm neg.

juan · Sep 2, 2020

I had the opportunity to see a number of prints Adams made in the 20s and 30s of some of his famous images. The prints are in the hands of a private collector who rarely displays them. His early interpretations are usually much smaller and far less contrasty and dramatic. So, his images are far more than just what camera, film, paper, etc. he used.

Ian Grant · Sep 2, 2020

When looking at AA's work it's worth remembering most of his well known images pre-date the Zone System and there's also quite a difference between his contemporary prints (made soon after shooting) and his later prints.

A few years ago there was touring exhibition of AA's prints from his 'collection and these were quite disaapointing (a general consensus) compared to images made from the same negatives years later for Classic Images a huge retrospective touring exhibition. He raelly only became a master printer quite late on.

He wasn't included in the huge Yale organised 1989 Art Of Photography Exhibition US/UK/Australia celebrating 150 years of Photography on the grounds his work wasn't innovative and he was treading in the footsteps of the early Topographic photographers who'd shot the opening up of the American West.

Ian

Paul Howell · Sep 2, 2020

AA was active from the 20s to the 80s, like 60s years, my personal favorites are from the 30 and 40, so some over lap with the Zone system. As he reprinted in the 70 and 80s his prints became more dramatic, question is was how he want to print or if he was printing for the market?

Vaughn · Sep 2, 2020

juan said:
I had the opportunity to see a number of prints Adams made in the 20s and 30s of some of his famous images. The prints are in the hands of a private collector who rarely displays them. His early interpretations are usually much smaller and far less contrasty and dramatic. So, his images are far more than just what camera, film, paper, etc. he used.

I have seen quite a few prints from that AA made all along his lifetime. Very interesting to see the transitions in material, time, tastes, and all. One's tools and material influences one's work, as well as the times and the viewers' changing perspective of the world...as does one's health and eyesight.

I am surprised at Yale's decision. I do not know if others would count it as innovative, or original, but AA took the early work of Jackson and all who were recording the early western landscape and presenting that landscape to the American people and the world -- and he added a sensibility to the quality of light and how it speaks of a place. That sensibility carried through and informed the innovative landscape photographers that came after.

Lachlan Young · Sep 2, 2020

There's correspondence from January 1954 between Adams and Paul Strand where Strand queries whether he should continue to use Kodak Portrait Pan (320TXP is the effective successor) developed in D-23 and Adams replies: "Portrait Pan film is very fine - perhaps the best quality for the kind of work we do. But the Super Panchro Press film is also fine and, of course, is more than twice as fast. With D-23 it gives excellent qualities. The only thing to do is to try it. I understand the new lsopan is a grand film, too. There is not much difference in scale between these films; it is chiefly a matter of speed and image-grain." The letters can be found here on pg.81 of the downloadable document.

Mainecoonmaniac · Sep 2, 2020

Donald Qualls said:
Some of his earlier work, including some true classics like one of Half Dome, were shot on glass plates.

Wow. I didn't know that.

Ian Grant · Sep 2, 2020

Vaughn said:
I am surprised at Yale's decision. I do not know if others would count it as innovative, or original, but AA took the early work of Jackson and all who were recording the early western landscape and presenting that landscape to the American people and the world -- and he added a sensibility to the quality of light and how it speaks of a place. That sensibility carried through and informed the innovative landscape photographers that came after.[/QUO}

The exhibition was a joint enterprise between Yale through the Museum of Fine Art in Houston. The Royal College of Art in in London, and The Australian National Gallery in Canberra. It was the British (Mike Weaver) and Australian who felt AA shouldn't be included against the wishes of curators Norman Rosenthal.

From an International perspective AA was relatively unknown outside the US for a long time, the first I knew of him was a couple of years earlier so 1987, but I knew of Edward Weston mid 1960' s and Paul Caponigro in the early 1980's also Minor White.

Adams was not an influential photographer in terms of the art, he based his legacy on the craft. Personally I find old college colleague Thomas Joshua Cooper more inspiring That's not to denigrate AA's work it's excellent but it's not cutting edge

Ian.

Maris · Sep 2, 2020

If I look away from the keyboard and scan my wall I see some Ansel Adams' photographs. And being interested in large format photography I delved into their original technical notes. The results are sketchy and somewhat cryptic. I believe Ansel did confess, like many of us, to rather loose note keeping. Here are some examples:

Half Dome, Glacier Pt, 5x7 film Kodak S 101 "Isopan", filter K2 #12, D-23 N+
Tenaya Creek, Dogwood, 8x10 film Kodak S 41
Thunderstorm, Yosemite Valley, 8x10 film Kodak Pan-X, filter K-2, D-23 N+
Moon and Half Dome, 120 film Kodak Panatomic X, filter G, N+1
Half Dome, Merced River, 8x10 film, Agfa Nitrate 4
Dogwood, 5x7 film Agfa S, N+1

Ansel's commentaries and books like Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs are much more informative.

ic-racer · Sep 2, 2020

Maris said:
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs are much more informative.

The OP should get that book.

I never understood Ansel, until I read that book. Growing up I considered Ansel 'old school' 'traditional' and 'conservative.'
That does not seem to be the case. In the book he is proud of such things as: printing to paper white, radical cropping, using small formats for landscape, dramatic filtration, commercial photography, extreme camera movements, unnusual Zone placements, non-traditional composition, massive multi-piece enlargements, Polaroid, extensive burning and dodging among other things. He purposely violates many 'rules' that the uninformed ascribe to him.

voceumana · Sep 2, 2020

Ansel did commercial work as well as "fine art", but lots of his fine art works of landscapes were under commission, too; The US National Archives has quite a lot of his work accessible on their website.

He was a good photographer. The image of Georgia O'Keefe (above) is one of my favorites.

reddesert · Sep 2, 2020

With curators, just like with artists, there are both Oedipal (slaying the authority figures) and national prerogatives that come into play in curatorial decisions, so who's in or out of any one exhibition isn't a final determination of their artistic merit.

A. Adams is one of the few photographers whose name and style are known by the general public (at least in the US), and I imagine for a curator or art historian who studies photography it must get a little tedious, much like how museums repeatedly organize exhibitions of the same few Impressionist painters because the public demands it.

When I started learning about serious photography and methods in the 80s-90s there were quite a few people (especially among serious amateurs and Internet experts) who were dogmatic followers of an Adams-like school of landscape photography, Zone System, etc. Hence the "St Ansel" jokes. The man himself was much less dogmatic about method as other posters have noted, and did a lot for education by his writing.

Vaughn · Sep 3, 2020

Thanks, Ian -- being a more international undertaking, I have more understanding...especially with reddesert's comment added (not AA again?!)

I was talking to a photographer/musician (guitar) who has heard many of the finest pianists in the world play in SF. He had the very rare opportunity to listen to Ansel play the piano during a birthday party of his in the Valley. His opinion was that technically, AA's skills had naturally lapsed from not practicing, but the emotional content of his playing was among the best he had ever heard. If one has the ear for it, I believe it can be heard in his work. That sort of thing is not cutting edge, though.

Ansel Adams Film and Method

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