Ansel Adams in colour .......

Amazon UK have just emailed me with an offer of 39% off this new book. Now I don't know if that means new to the UK, the world or just Amazon, but checking this forum back to April doesn't get a hit for this book. Anybody seen/own it and is it good enough that I should set aside my b&w preferences? :confused:

Flicked through a copy in a local book store - The prints that I looked at were all pretty small and don't have the same impact as some of the large B&W books.

One look at the book and Ansel's color work reinforced my belief that he was a superb B&W photographer.

I am not sure how new it is, maybe on your side of the pond. I have had a copy since about 2004 or so. Paul is right though, the prints are kinda small. If you want a copy you can get a used one off of Amazon US for 3.99 USD.

Kodak got AA to take color photographs. His take on color was that it was ok, but he could not do much in the custom work in the darkroom. Therefore he preferred back & white.

Steve

I have AA Death Valley book from 40s and color images are excellent and A3 size. Colors are far from todays colors and this is so beatiful. He was using color correction filters and the polarizer heavily and colors are so interesting. You cant be sure without being there when picture taken , death valley is so different place.
I think his BW prints were azo at this book.

Best ,

Mustafa Umut Sarac

Istanbul

Do you mean this book: http://www.amazon.com/Ansel-Adams-Color/dp/0821219804 ?

If so, I recently checked it out of my local library and read it cover to cover. The gist of the book (from its author's perspective) is that Ansel was never really comfortable with color. In color's early days, he didn't feel the technology was up to snuff compared to B&W and by its latter days he seemed to be yearning to be good in color but resigned to the fact that he was better in B&W. The photographs are interesting, but definitely do not pack a full AA punch. I often found myself shaking my head and saying, "wow, that's just not that good." I did read the book cover to cover though, because it has excerpts from many letters that Ansel wrote to friends. I found them intriguing. I once heard Bruce Barnbaum note that Ansel had told him that he (Bruce) could not see in black and white and should concentrate on color. Thankfully Messr. Barnbaum did not heed that call. There is a very similar written excerpt in the book that made me wonder if Ansel pushed many young photographers toward color in his latter years. Anyway, I digress. I think your question was should I buy it. My answer would be to find it in your local library or book store and peruse it at length. But in terms of buying, in my mind, there are many more stunning publications regarding Ansel's work and his life story.

36cm2 said:

Do you mean this book: http://www.amazon.com/Ansel-Adams-Color/dp/0821219804 ?

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The one I'm talking about is actually in the list below yours of what people also bought and it's this one http://www.amazon.com/Ansel-Adams-Color-Andrea-Stillman/dp/0316056413/ref=pd_sim_b_2

The Amazon ad says:

Product Description
Renowned as America's pre-eminent black-and-white landscape photographer, Ansel Adams began to photograph in color soon after Kodachrome film was invented in the mid 1930s. He made nearly 3,500 color photographs, a small fraction of which were published for the first time in the 1993 edition of ANSEL ADAMS IN COLOR. In this newly revised and expanded edition, 20 unpublished photographs have been added. New digital scanning and printing technologies also mean that the book now offers a more faithful representation of Adams's color photography.

I'm getting a flavour here that it would probably be the type of book I should browse in a library, but perhaps not the one to spend money on?

Yeah, looks like it's the same book, just a new edition (20 new photos and maybe better reproduction throughout). I'd still browse.

AA did a lot of color at the request of both the National Geographic and Eastman Kodak. Kodak used his 4 photos of the Grand Tetons taken in the early moring, mid day, afternoon and evening in one of their color books to illustrate color temperature changes.

Nat Geog used his Grand Tetons years ago and in about 1990 asked Grant Haist to retrace AAs steps through the Grand Tetons and rephotograph everything using modern color film. This project was completed as to photography, but the transparencies were never processed due to Grant having a stroke. I now have those unprocessed sheets, amounting to probably over 100 4x5s. It would be interesting to compare them to AAs originals.

PE

Photo Engineer said:

This project was completed as to photography, but the transparencies were never processed due to Grant having a stroke. I now have those unprocessed sheets, amounting to probably over 100 4x5s. It would be interesting to compare them to AAs originals.

PE

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I haven't heard of this guy Grant Haist, but I'm guessing he was a good photographer if National Geographic were paying him to do this. PE, you owe the world the chance to see these shots, so go to it and get them souped!

Peter;

Grant is author of the two volume "Modern Photographic Processing and author of some Nat Geog articles such as those on the Galapagos islands featured on the cover many years ago. He also supplied photos for many Kodak "How To" books.

As for processing the film, will you pay for processing about 100 sheets of Ektachrome at about $4 / sheet?

That is my problem. And, they are over 10 years old.

PE

PE , I can not say 400 dollars is small money , but it must feel cheaper at usa than here. Even a garbage man gets 2500 monthly at there and i think you must process them. If you have no money still , pass them to a museum with the rule of processing them immediately.
They have a history and you dont have right to wait them damaged , am i wrong ?

Mustafa Umut Sarac

Grant entrusted them to me, with the proviso that he did not know what shape they were in, nor did he know how many there were. I have them frozen a about -20 deg C. I doubt that they are in very good condition after all this time. In any event, when I have the money, I have to decide whether to invest in DR work for emulsion making or getting these E6 films processed.

When I can, I will.

PE

thanks PE. this would be a treat to see.

I think everyone's feeling the pinch right now. supposedly less students these next two terms from the looks of it

Photo Engineer said:

AA did a lot of color at the request of both the National Geographic and Eastman Kodak. Kodak used his 4 photos of the Grand Tetons taken in the early moring, mid day, afternoon and evening in one of their color books to illustrate color temperature changes.

Nat Geog used his Grand Tetons years ago and in about 1990 asked Grant Haist to retrace AAs steps through the Grand Tetons and rephotograph everything using modern color film. This project was completed as to photography, but the transparencies were never processed due to Grant having a stroke. I now have those unprocessed sheets, amounting to probably over 100 4x5s. It would be interesting to compare them to AAs originals.

PE

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>:O WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
I wanna see

Xpro a few hehe

His color photographs closely resemble his black and white work. Upon looking through a book at Barnes and Noble a couple of weeks ago, not only do I prefer Ansel Adams B&W work to his color, i realized just how much I prefer black and white over color on the whole personally and did not realize such until looking through this book.

The photographs are splendid. But the color distracts from the master's work. I do not like the book.

The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, who hold Ansel Adams' body of work along with the work of many other photographers (but not Grant Haist), might be very interested in getting his work processed and exhibited. All you'd need is a $500-$1000 research grant (processing plus archiving costs). Why not contact them?

Has anyone seen Edward Weston's color photography? It's my opinion but it's just not worthy of his signature. I looked through Ansel Adams book at the book store last week and I would actually buy it. It's not the Ansel Adams in B&W as we know it but it far better than the attempt by Edward Weston as a comparison. I can see how he was able to work over the black and white prints in a way the color ones could not be. They are two very different ways of seeing. I prefer black and white but an excellent color print is hard to say no to. I think there is something beyond color or monochrome that attracts me, abstract, graphic, composition, what ever it is it can be found in all photography as well as in painting and prints.

I was looking through one of my AA books, I think it was either the Negative?

he talked about color photography, and he said that if the materials were available earlier than they were when he commented on this, he would have worked more in color.

but, I suspect that at the time that he wrote this, the color materials(paper and films) weren't up to 'snuff', like the b/w emulsions of the time in terms of archivability.

-Dan

PE - I'll chip in $40 to process Grant's photos. Now we just need to find 10 people more that are willing to do it as well.

By the way - I can get 4x5 E-6 for $2.25 a sheet here from a lab that uses a good dip-n-dunk machine.

Kirk

samys santa barbara does E-6(well, its fuji chems) for $1.70/sheet.

free return shipping too.

Dead Link Removed

-Dan

<EDIT> they process on dip n' dunk on refremas. fast turnaround to boot. generally processed the same day as received in the mail, and out the next day. I've only had a great experience with them so far.