Ansel Adams Film and Method

[RalphLambrecht]

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?

AFAIK,he mainly used Kodak films(TriX) and an 8x10 camera;his dark skies are a combination of filtering during camera´xposure and burning in the darkroom.

 

[juan]

This is an interesting documentary about Adams with him playing piano for the music bed. It also shows the large amount of equipment he would take on a shoot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-BhJQqHXfQ

 

[david schaller]

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.

Thanks for posting this link. Very interesting correspondence.

 

[Paul Howell]

For the ugly side of AA find a copy of Ansel Adams Photographs from the National Park Service Archive, by Basil Cannon, let's just say that the Park Service has many prints that were at best work prints, many from really badly exposed negatives. Others might have been negatives that were bracketed.

 

[takilmaboxer]

I'm a blues guitarist, and some 20 years ago I was playing in a bar across the street from the Peter Smith Gallery in Santa Fe. One day I walked in there and they had a mural sized print of "Moonrise" hanging on the wall (with a six figure price tag). When I expressed interest in the print, and despite my warning that I hadn't the financial resources to purchase such works of art, they were kind enough to pull out several examples of that famous image, from earlier in AA's career. Interestingly the earlier prints had much less contrast, the sky was sort of middle grey, and the distinguishing feature was the white crosses in the foreground. With time the prints became more dramatic, culminating in the black sky of the most recent prints. It was a vivid example of AA's attitude that the negative is like a score, while the print is the performance. I learned a lot that day!
And to address the OP's question, there was no appreciable grain visible in those mural sized prints. He must have used a fine grained film, and we all know he used an 8X10 camera.

 

[Sirius Glass]

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?

By his own statements, his eyes were changing and he needed more contrast in the photographs to see them better.

 

[Donald Qualls]

And to address the OP's question, there was no appreciable grain visible in those mural sized prints. He must have used a fine grained film, and we all know he used an 8X10 camera.

An 8x10 negative printed to 32x40 is the same level of enlargement as 35mm printed to 4x6 inches. If you see grain at that level, you're looking too close and in danger of leaving a nose print on the (very expensive) AA print.

 

[Ian Grant]

By his own statements, his eyes were changing and he needed more contrast in the photographs to see them better.

I've seen a lot of original AA prints here in the UK and the US and he actually printed softer and more tonally in later life, he did dodge and burn more and that could give an impression of more localised contrast.

I think there's something we miss except for a few odd occasions he wasn't working on coherent projects or series of images. The US Citizens of Japanese Japanese origin in internment camp series is the most coherent whetere it's good Ican't comment as I've only seen fragments. But if you look at his portfolios they aren't remotely coherent.
Curators like Beaumont Newhall didn't seem to improve things, but John Szarkowski did manage some coherence in the ClassiC Images Exhibition in London at the Barbican in 1887, but this was essentially a slight tweak to a previous US touring exhibition going back to 1985.

Ive also seen a lot of Edward Weston prints and never notices a particularly noticeable change over the years. When it comes to European photographers like Kertesz there's a huge difference between contemporary prins usually small on warm tone papers an jewel like, and later larger prints on bland bromide papers. But the later prints are still good but you only know the huge difference if you've seen the small jewel like originals.

I think I saw AA's Classic Images and pre-WWII Kertesz images on the same day at the Barbican in London in 1987, the AA exhibition was huge, the Kertesz small in a bar area but mind blowingly impressive. AA's prints were superb and impressive but Kertesz's images had soul something AA's prints lacked and were tiny I think all less than 10x8. That had an impact on me, and I've actually made reduction prints on occasions from 5x4 negative when it'll work, hand ade books.

Ian

 

[Paul Howell]

AA did a lot of commercial work and porturites, in the 80s I had a calendar with a photo of AA with a 4X5 taking a class picture of grammar school kids, all misbehaving, the caption was "Even Ansel Adams Has to Make a Living". He was awarded grants by the Dept of Interior Parks Division to Photograph the National Parks, his own work in and around Northern California was primarily landscapes which he excelled at. For some AA's work has soul, I like his work, but the work I'm drawn to is 30 to 50s photojournalist, Eugene Smith, Margaret Book White, Robert Capa and many others. I don't think one is "superior to the others, just different, evoking different emotions in different people.

 

[Vaughn]

...
And to address the OP's question, there was no appreciable grain visible in those mural sized prints. He must have used a fine grained film, and we all know he used an 8X10 camera.

And a horizontal 8x10 enlarger with rolls of mural paper hanging from the wall.

 

[takilmaboxer]

He had a very long career, during an era when the technical development of silver emulsions was continuously advancing. He was technically minded too. Must have driven him nuts trying to keep up with the constant changes. Although he did tend to stick with D23 and HC110.
If only we had to put up with a rash of new technological advancements in BW film...

 

[Donald Qualls]

Say anything you like about Ansel's "soulless" images -- I've wanted to grow up to be him since I found the first editions of his how-to trilogy (The Camera, The Negative, and The Print) in my local small town library. That was fifty years ago...

 

[Paul Howell]

And a horizontal 8x10 enlarger with rolls of mural paper hanging from the wall.

His first 8X10 was a solar enlarger, made from a 11X14 frame and bellows it was powered by the sun, a frosted glass defused the light. He said that as long the sky was either overcast or sunny without clouds it was very consistent. HIs image the Golden Gate Before the Bridge was printed on it. A long time ago, maybe 20s I knew a guy here in Arizona who made his own version, built in side of his garage. north facing wall. He did good work.

 

[Christiaan Phleger]

I think that AA never really had to 'keep up with technological changes', rather I think one of his greatest gifts was providing a sense of order to the whole thing. His opinions and work with the major film photography players is well known, and I understand that the general state of photographic material sensitivity was quite varied from manufacturer to manufacturer. We take it for granted that when the box of film says ISO 400 we can set our meters correctly to get the density we desire.

 

[MarkS]

Adams was supremely talented, loved his subject matter, AND worked harder and longer than just about anyone else. The OP needs a copy of "Examples"... the main lesson from that book was that despite his tremendous technical knowledge, he still worked very hard in the darkroom to achieve the print that expressed what he wanted. And of course over sixty years, that changed too. Simply a great artist.

 

[Acticus]

For the ugly side of AA find a copy of Ansel Adams Photographs from the National Park Service Archive, by Basil Cannon, let's just say that the Park Service has many prints that were at best work prints, many from really badly exposed negatives. Others might have been negatives that were bracketed.

Ha! Zone System Schmone system.....Just bracket!

 

[Paul Howell]

I think that AA never really had to 'keep up with technological changes', rather I think one of his greatest gifts was providing a sense of order to the whole thing. His opinions and work with the major film photography players is well known, and I understand that the general state of photographic material sensitivity was quite varied from manufacturer to manufacturer. We take it for granted that when the box of film says ISO 400 we can set our meters correctly to get the density we desire.

AA kept up with tech, he started in the 1920s, shoot until his 80s and death. First light meter Weston selimum cell, last meter digital Pentax Spot, from ring around to determine film speed to a densitometers. I've wondered what he would do I could go back in time and give a Nikon D5, Light Room and a large format printer.

 

[takilmaboxer]

I one met a woman who worked for AA as a darkroom aide. She said he was a great employer, but a workaholic and a perfectionist as well.

 

[DREW WILEY]

He used all kinds of films, formats, and cameras over his long career. Most of these specific films no longer exist. The rather famous inky black sky images often involved a red filter, neg intensification in one notable case, and plain ole heavy development. But since skies did not suffer from the same degree of high altitude jet contrails as today, even a deep yellow filter (what was termed a K2 back then) had a stronger effect darkening a "blue" sky than it typically does today. That high contrast crisp look tends to fall apart when those same old 8x10 negs are enlarged bigger than 20X24, or sometimes even bigger than 16X20. The mural sizes were printed softly, somewhat warm, and have a more poetic fell rather than dramatic flavor. I once split a big retrospective exhibition with the biggest collection of his mural sized images ever assembled, so got to see quite a few of those up close. His old grainy films and less precise optics simply didn't allow the same degree of detail as today. Later, his Hasselblad work was mainly done with Pan-X. He pretty much kept pace with camera advances, but his darkroom was comparatively primitive - not atypical for a pro commercial photographer, but hardly up to what commercial labs were equipped with.

 

[pbromaghin]

His Manzanar pics can be found as a coherent collection in the book, "Manzanar" by John Armor and Peter Wright. The book jacket referred to the photos as his "only foray into documentary-style work", and I have to say it does show a very different side to him. Landscapes, town meetings, volleyball games, domesticity, and portraits galore (outdoors with natural light, btw), it is a far cry from the Tetons, or Halfdome. They were originally published in "Born Free and Equal" during the war. It turned out to be less than popular, and I've read it was banned and burned in some places. He donated all the photos to the Library of Congress, where the "Manzanar" authors discovered and used them to illustrate their 1988 book.

He visited in '43 and '44 when the camp was pretty well established. He missed most of the pretty bad early conditions that my in-laws told me about. Only one of them is left, and he was 3 years old at the time.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It certainly wasn't his only documentary work. He was primarily a commercial photographer, and in that capacity did all kinds of things, including what could be reasonably termed documentary projects even for the city of Los Angeles. His most famous Manzanar image of all, titled Mt Willamson from Manzanar, and featured in Steiglitz's Family of Man exhibition, wasn't of Mt Willamson at all, which is a far more imposing peak 7 miles further north and and about 3000 feet higher. When I was not quite in my teenage years, my mother would drive us down from the mountains to help a particular returned Japanese family harvest their orchard, starting all over again. They eventually became quite successful again. But my entire life I've been convinced that a major aspect of that whole dismal internment episode was a concocted ruse so certain huge agribusiness interests could acquire, or basically steal, their many flourishing farms and orchards for next to nothing.

 

[pbromaghin]

Drew, I agree 100% with your conviction.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

After Manzanar reception, no wonder he went back to landscapes.

 

[DREW WILEY]

He was doing landscapes all along, Alan, even from his youth. But that didn't pay his bills until he was downright old. Commercial photography did. An opportunity like Manzanar with a grant was an exception; but even then he did a lot of personal landscape work outside the camp. He was quite careful not to rile the system, so to speak. It was people like Dorothea Lange who deliberately emphasized the unfairness, photographically, and didn't get welcomed back. The camp commander was actually quite sympathetic even though he had to officially enforce certain rules, and who deliberately turned a blind eye to Toyo Miyatake making a homemade box camera and sneaking in film to document it from the inside. Quite a story. I drove past there last week, but the forest fire smoke in Owens Valley was way too bad to visit this time. Although I was born after the War, I still vividly remember from my childhood the atmosphere of ethnic hatred officially drummed up as national policy relative to the War effort. But here on the West coast there were supplementary factors related to sheer greed and the seizure of valuable farm properties.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Drew, I was born a the end of the war and don't remember any hatred other than patriotic feeling about the war highlighted in the many war time movies Hollywood made. I suppose there was more animosity on the west coast during the war. The fear level of attacks from Japan were higher there since the west was only an ocean away. Japan was actually sending bombs by balloon using wind weather patterns. Many landed in California and other western areas. The War Dept never reported them so Japan would not know they were being somewhat successful. When I spent two years stationed in Japan in the mid 1960's, I had a great Japanese friend and never felt any animosity towards Americans at all from anyone. I never even thought of the war while I was there.