Ansel Adams Film and Method

[KenS]

To many of those who use large format, Ansel was (and still is "at the top of the heap") there are still a few who one might 'compare' (and consider) to be 'in the same boat'. If I may.. might I suggest you 'take a peek' at some of the images 'created' (made??) by John Sexton (seek out his images in his book "Quiet Light").

Ken
(Who still hates to 'hear..and/or read the expression "taking and/or 'shooting' " when one is 'out there'... being 'creative' with a camera (and film). My mentor (some 60+ years ago) always insisted that good photographs were "made".

 

[DREW WILEY]

Hundreds, probably thousands, of people still use large format cameras. But since it's now a specialty niche rather than routine, it tends to attract some pretty intense talent. AA was at an opportune juncture in history and deservedly made his mark, but there were in my opinion even greater landscape photographers before him, and quite a number of significant ones afterwards. He never was the "gold standard" for many of us, either technically or esthetically. One has to somehow find their own way. We don't all wear beards, cowboy hats, and have a bent nose just because he did.

 

[Vaughn]

To many of those who use large format, Ansel was (and still is "at the top of the heap") there are still a few who one might 'compare' (and consider) to be 'in the same boat'. If I may.. might I suggest you 'take a peek' at some of the images 'created' (made??) by John Sexton (seek out his images in his book "Quiet Light").

Ken
(Who still hates to 'hear..and/or read the expression "taking and/or 'shooting' " when one is 'out there'... being 'creative' with a camera (and film). My mentor (some 60+ years ago) always insisted that good photographs were "made".

Brett Weston on his way from Redding back to Carmel, I suppose, stopped by the university and showed his work to us -- our professor had been one of many assistants of his. The prof also disliked the word 'shooting', and when Brett said it as he was talking to us, the prof mentioned it to him. Brett made the point of using 'shooting' and so forth as much as possible after that. I did enjoy the way he showed his work -- no comments, no questions, just the work.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I don't care if Brett coughed it. He didn't even like talking about his own work. In his case, all you needed was a pair of eyes. I could spot even a small print of his clear across the room - pure magic.

 

[takilmaboxer]

"but there were in my opinion even greater landscape photographers before him, and quite a number of significant ones afterwards."
How true, how true! You could start with Edward Weston or his son Brett. But it was AA who wrote instructional books and thereby taught so many of us how to do it. Plus his almost heroic landscape style fit the national mood at the time, especially for those of us who were into the environmental movement. I had a photo teacher once, Richard Misrach, whose landscapes got about as far from AA as possible. Much more modern, not afraid of depicting the bad side of human interaction with Nature.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Well, nobody is going to supersede AA as the confluence of the Natl Parks movement, acceptance of photography as a fine art, and his personal manner of rendering scenes that so appealed to American consciousness. And having been raised in those mountains, I can appreciate more than most his remarkable poetic sensitivity to the light. But ironically, I never saw any of this actual prints until I was exhibiting in certain of the same venues myself, doing strictly color work at the time, but most certainly not in the briefly trendy Misrach style.
Back then I was doing big richly detailed but rather Zen Cibachromes, but certainly not postcardy themes. They went over very well with photographers and rich collectors per se; but I've never sold a print to a tourist in my entire life. Brett W. left me a nice note and once bought a couple of my smaller prints; but the only show I ever did with AA was posthumous, timed immediately after his death as a major retrospective. They wanted me because my work was a complete stylistic counterpoint, yet had been photographed in the same regions. The insurance companies wouldn't allow the show to travel elsewhere afterwards. I have great admiration for AA. But Misrach was simply too rude toward personal friends of mine who once printed his color work to comment much here; but I do have one of his books on my shelf, and have of course seen a lot of his prints in person. He was a wild experimenter who sometimes belly-flopped, and sometimes hit a home run. That kind of tortuous slow academic art career with its inevitable "starving artist" phases just doesn't appeal to me; but he finally did well over the long run.

 

[takilmaboxer]

He was rude to me tooand I was using him as an example of post-AA landscape large format. Speaking for myself, the AA landscape style appealed to my overly idealistic youthful side, which, shall we say, has been tempered by time. I have since found solace in trying to balance humanity's decline, and its attendant environmental costs, with the ideals that led youth toward AA's work. As an amateur, of course fully aware that my negatives might outlast me by a week or two, when someone tosses them!

 

[DREW WILEY]

I'm more confident in the destiny of my print collection. Some dumpster diver will find a huge stack of drymounted museum board below a dripping ketchup bottle, and discover how much better it tastes than the scraps in the dumpster behind the local pizza parlor.

 

[Vaughn]

Well, some ants found three boxes of my 4-ply rag window matted, dry-mounted 16x20 silver gelatin prints on 20x24 boards to be perfect housing. I laid all the prints out on the driveway to disperse the ants and it started to rain. One way of reducing one's load. I know my boys will want to take most of my matted prints..if they can is a different story.

I assisted a FoP workshop of which Richard was a faculty member. Good impression of him...he could handle an 8x10 as easily as some proficient photographers uses a 35mm camera. Strong personality, to be sure...otherwise most people would have given up the art. Just as his work was beginning to be bought by collectors/museum, he could no longer make the same work due to a major shift in the manufacturing of the paper he used (Portriga Rapid). There is the rarity factor -- but that just works for those already owning the prints he could not make any more of. He went to 8x10 color. Then a studio fire wiped out a lot of his negatives/transparencies and other stuff.

 

[takilmaboxer]

Ah yes, Portriga Rapid....Light selenium toning...Diffusion enlarger...Panatomic-X...(sigh)

 

[DREW WILEY]

Vaughn, Misrach claimed to be allergic to RA4 chem, so relied on local labs, but tended to wear out his welcome. Quite a few of those color negs were retained in the labs for sake of ongoing print orders, so probably survived until inevitably faded (mostly Vericolor L). He now claims to be able to do far better work MF digital, and I believe it. He might have been able to work fast with a Dorff, but he couldn't critical focus it worth a damn. That made little difference with his very soft style of color imagery. That whole 70's off-color trend was quite interesting, but had close to zero influence on me personally. His starting point, gritty b&w nite photos of Telegraph Ave are very much like I remember it in the bad ole days - heroin dealers, dangerous cult gurus, brain-dead drug burnouts, and "chicken hawk" human traffickers on every block of it at night.

 

[braxus]

Thanks for all the comments guys! I got two of his books this past week, but not the ones mentioned. He seemed to love B&W an awful lot. I do a mix myself. I even have some Panatomic X in 4x5 I should try and use. Maybe some landscapes ha ha. I also have an 8x10 Ansco, but that kit isn't complete yet to be useable. Ansel Adams has a great sense of composition, something I strive to do well at myself. Maybe down the road I'll get the three books Camera, etc. I don't develop my own film, but send to a lab and scan. I have done darkroom stuff in the past, but my current residence doesn't have a place to make one now.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

The Making of 40 Photographs is one book of his that I enjoy looking at and reading. Gives a lot of insight to gear he used, film, paper, developers, etc.

 

[unityofsaints]

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.

Well said, he was much more of an innovator than people give him credit.

The Making of 40 Photographs is one book of his that I enjoy looking at and reading. Gives a lot of insight to gear he used, film, paper, developers, etc.

Great recommendation, thank you!

 

[Paul Howell]

Thanks for all the comments guys! I got two of his books this past week, but not the ones mentioned. He seemed to love B&W an awful lot. I do a mix myself. I even have some Panatomic X in 4x5 I should try and use. Maybe some landscapes ha ha. I also have an 8x10 Ansco, but that kit isn't complete yet to be useable. Ansel Adams has a great sense of composition, something I strive to do well at myself. Maybe down the road I'll get the three books Camera, etc. I don't develop my own film, but send to a lab and scan. I have done darkroom stuff in the past, but my current residence doesn't have a place to make one now.

When AA started to photograph in the 1920 black and white was king, commercial and otherwise, when color films became available the process was expensive and did not have a long life, faded on display. Color was slow, Kodachrome started with a ASA of 9, had lots of grain. AA did some color, he was sponsored by polaroid, shot transparencies which were dye transfer printed. For a sample of his color work see Ansel Adams in Color. Still, for the most part I think black and white landscapes are stronger, that I think black and white is strong in most cases, when I think of the great photographers I think of black and white. Color is too close to our daily experience of the world.

 

[DREW WILEY]

He simply didn't visualize composition in color, although his relatively few color shots were tasteful. He was also hung up on Zone System manipulations, and really didn't understand how color contrast in controlled. AA was surrounded by friends and neighbors who were competent dye transfer printers; but I still find it inexplicable that he himself seemingly did not ever seriously experiment with contrast control masking.
And I suspect an amount of jealousy was in play when Eliot Porter's color work was overtaking his own style and becoming the predominant form of visual communication in the conservation movement. That was one of the main points of contention between Adams and David Brower for control of the Sierra Club, and behind its split. None of these people were devoid of egos; but one primary underlying factor was the significantly greater expense of high-quality color reproduction back then, which was draining Sierra Club funds, yet at the same time, garnering tremendous public interest just like Brower argued. I still have a copy of Porter's iconic Glenn Canyon book, with its varnished pages. That level of color bookmaking would simply be unaffordable today.
As far as Polaroid goes, they were essentially a cash-poor start-up when they asked AA to do sample work with their products. So they paid him with stock instead. That stock was one of the main sources of his personal wealth later on.
As per Kodachrome, it was available in sheet film sizes then, so a bit of grain was irrelevant. It was a beautiful product, and even Edward Weston made a few iconic images on Kodachrome, even though he felt uncomfortable with color himself.

 

[takilmaboxer]

For people like me, those iconic Sierra Club books were like a hook that caught us up in the environmental movement. But my visits to shows of the work of Adams, Weston and even Mapplethorpe were revelatory with respect to photographic art. Black and white is intrinsically abstract; color is so familiar to us that it takes a different perspective to see the prints purely as art. Porter's prints felt like you could simply walk right into the scene.
Nowadays, I'm always turned off by the digital artists who way overdo the colors through computer manipulation. I'll take analog any day. You can overdo it but only so much. Keep it up, Mr. Wiley.

 

[Sirius Glass]

He simply didn't visualize composition in color, although his relatively few color shots were tasteful. He was also hung up on Zone System manipulations, and really didn't understand how color contrast in controlled. AA was surrounded by friends and neighbors who were competent dye transfer printers; but I still find it inexplicable that he himself seemingly did not ever seriously experiment with contrast control masking.
And I suspect an amount of jealousy was in play when Eliot Porter's color work was overtaking his own style and becoming the predominant form of visual communication in the conservation movement. That was one of the main points of contention between Adams and David Brower for control of the Sierra Club, and behind its split. None of these people were devoid of egos; but one primary underlying factor was the significantly greater expense of high-quality color reproduction back then, which was draining Sierra Club funds, yet at the same time, garnering tremendous public interest just like Brower argued. I still have a copy of Porter's iconic Glenn Canyon book, with its varnished pages. That level of color bookmaking would simply be unaffordable today.
As far as Polaroid goes, they were essentially a cash-poor start-up when they asked AA to do sample work with their products. So they paid him with stock instead. That stock was one of the main sources of his personal wealth later on.
As per Kodachrome, it was available in sheet film sizes then, so a bit of grain was irrelevant. It was a beautiful product, and even Edward Weston made a few iconic images on Kodachrome, even though he felt uncomfortable with color himself.

Ansel Adams said the reason that he did not shoot much color is that color could not be manipulated as much as black & white. He further stated that when color was manipulated it could easily become unrealistic. He further stated that if he could work with color to the degree that he could with black & white, then he would use color film.

 

[pbromaghin]

He also said looking at a color photo was like listening to a piano that was slightly out of tune.

 

[Paul Howell]

Sirius Glass is spot on, I attended a lecture he gave in San Francisco in the early 70s, the question came up, he answered the same as Sirus Glass's post. At an AA exhibit here in Phoenix there were 2 color prints from the same transparency, one done by dye transfer, one with Cibachrome, he said the dye transfer was closest to the original, the Cibachrome was too saturated. I think AA understood color, and if he been born 20 years later might have been a different story.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Agreed, as stated many times by Ansel himself. But extremely high quality color work was on going most of his lifetime, even of landscape subjects. He learned to adapt his own tonal controls to black and white impressions of realism, which of course never are actually real, but effective personal interpretations of light and texture in his case. He could play a piano, and use that analogy; but unless one is an actual color printmaker or exceptionally skilled communicating with a custom printer, it's almost impossible to understand how different color as an instrument is. Trying to turn a violin or guitar into a piano instead is going to be frustrating. So if something seemed out of tune to him, it wasn't the medium necessarily at fault. He just didn't have sufficient experience, interest, or suitable darkroom skills and equipment for it. Some people can successfully juggle both color and black and white imagery without conflict, while others like Ansel and Brett Weston couldn't. Cole Weston could do it, but concentrated more on color for sake of getting out from under his father's shadow, I suspect, whose b&w negs he had to reprint once EW himself was too old or had passed away.

 

[kfed1984]

Anybody knows which of the following photos from AA original negatives were shot on 8x10, 4x5, medium format etc.? In particular if any of these are contact prints from 8x10. Thanks.

Yosemite Special Edition Photographs - Black and White - AAG

Ansel Adams launched the Yosemite Special Edition Black and White photography series in 1958. Today, Alan Ross makes each Special Edition Photographs by hand from Adams ' original negative on gelatin silver fiber paper.s

shop.anseladams.com

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

The Moon and Half Dome was medium format. I think that was the only one on that page. The rest were mostly 8x10.

 

[kfed1984]

The Moon and Half Dome was medium format. I think that was the only one on that page. The rest were mostly 8x10.

Thanks. So they are all contacts from 8x10 negs? Strangely, when I called the gallery a few months back, the lady said none of these are contact prints, although I know at least some of them should be from 8x10. Maybe she does not know as she sounded a bit lost, or maybe Alan Ross is projecting the image without enlargement. Maybe he's using AA's original enlarger which can be adjusted to project an image on paper without enlargement.

 

[Vaughn]

Alan Ross contact prints all the Special Edition prints from original negatives. I believe none are MF, but I'll ask next time I see Alan or am at the Gallery.