Poor man's previsualization

[Dan Daniel]

All this pre-visualization stuff takes all the surprise and fun out of the first test print. Just shows how insecure photographers are. Adams himself said that the negative was the score and the print was the performance. Sure sounds like he saw the whole prcess as part of the game. The way some people fetishize the Zone System, it turns them into automatons, simply executing technical procedures after firing the shutter.

The Zone System is a tool. That's it. It is not a result, a creative vision. It is a tool to achieve certain results (which can be achieved with other tools, by the way). You don't have workshops for painters on choosing a brush, for writers on which paper and pen to use. Imagine architects having a symposium on hammers.

 

[MattKing]

Imagine architects having a symposium on hammers.

They probably have professional development courses on design software solutions and Building Code revisions.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Ha! Architects and engineers would be way better at their own career if they first understood how to use a hammer, or whatever the real world involves before they go around dictating to other people how to do things. I was heavily involved with both architects and builders, and the best architects chose to apprentice to reputable contractors first, so they'd actually know what they were talking about when they went into practice for themselves. Otherwise, all hell can break loose. People idolize architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Bernard Maybeck; but their designs often caused utter misery over time : leaking roofs, collapsing walls, cracked foundations. I've consulted on renovations by both famous architects, and numerous others too. Esthetically grand and functionally durable are not necessarily synonymous.

Likewise when it comes to photo gurus. A part of the problem not sufficiently recognized these days is that many of those old heroes worked with long-scale contact papers quite different from today's projection papers. Hence they espoused overexposed, overdeveloped "thick" negatives - advice likely to be counterproductive nowadays unless one is working in a similarly long scale process. But once that kind of practice got enshrined into literature and workshops, it kinda stuck, logical or not.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Ha! Architects and engineers would be way better at their own career if they first understood how to use a hammer, or whatever the real world involves before they go around dictating to other people how to do things. I was heavily involved with both architects and builders, and the best architects chose to apprentice to reputable contractors first, so they'd actually know what they were talking about when they went into practice for themselves. Otherwise, all hell can break loose. People idolize architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Bernard Maybeck; but their designs often caused utter misery over time : leaking roofs, collapsing walls, cracked foundations. I've consulted on renovations by both famous architects, and numerous others too. Esthetically grand and functionally durable are not necessarily synonymous.

Likewise when it comes to photo gurus. A part of the problem not sufficiently recognized these days is that many of those old heroes worked with long-scale contact papers quite different from today's projection papers. Hence they espoused overexposed, overdeveloped "thick" negatives - advice likely to be counterproductive nowadays unless one is working in a similarly long scale process. But once that kind of practice got enshrined into literature and workshops, it kinda stuck, logical or not.

What makes you think that architects and engineers do not know what they are doing??

 

[BrianShaw]

What makes you think that architects and engineers do not know what they are doing??

Go, young man, go… don’t let anyone get away with that kind of slander/libel.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Zones 3 and 4 aren't really serious shadow values unless your film has a very limited contrast range like Pan F, or if the scene itself is relatively low contrast. No wonder those alleged ZS gurus who preach that have so much trouble with overexposed blown-out highlights. I could mention a couple of well-known names, but somebody will no doubt get offended that I swatted their favorite sacred cow.

But I guess people just gotta try it. Even ole Ansel recognized more usable shadow gradation real estate down there than that. But it all depends on the specific film and exactly how you expose and develop it, as well as how you intend to print it. Roll film could be used for bracket testing relative to Z2, vs Z3, vs Z4 to at least get onto first base. But without test printing the results too, it's hard to know if you're on the right track or not. Practice makes perfect.

I don't know how anyone "previsualizes" if they don't know what to look for yet. Sounds like a dead-end alley even if they do know. The point is, you want to end up with a VERSATILE negative, which is amenable to a reasonable range of printing options. Even the apotheosized saints of Zone lore understood that, despite all their die-cast ideologue manifestos. A hole in one print is rare.

If you want to ask Minor White personally something, he's probably on some UFO seeking the ashes of Timothy Leary so he can learn color photography too.

But everyone does well with the basic simple advice already cited : expose do the shadows, develop for the highlights.

Maybe they're bad copies, but when I look at many of Ansel Adam's pictures, he has lots of complete blacks in them where he didn't seem interested in knowing what's going on in the shadows. Blacks are very dramatic. Often, who cares what's in the shadows? The eyes are drawn to lighter areas anyway. I think people get hung up with getting shadow details when they're unimportant

Here's an example. Does anyone care if the bark of the trees is black? In fact, does the blackness make a more dramatic picture?

 

[MattKing]

That particular Amazon listing example:
"Prints are giclee printed using fade-resistant inks for picture-perfect detail and incredible depth of color. "
Those prints themselves may be good, bad or indifferent. But they certainly are enough steps removed from Adams' original exposure that there is no reliable way to determine whether the original negative included impactful, detail laden shadows, or blank voids.
And if the detail is there in the shadows, the prints will have a fundamentally different effect on the viewer than one where the shadows are blank.

 

[Mike Lopez]

Maybe they're bad copies, but when I look at many of Ansel Adam's pictures, he has lots of complete blacks in them where he didn't seem interested in knowing what's going on in the shadows. Blacks are very dramatic. Often, who cares what's in the shadows? The eyes are drawn to lighter areas anyway. I think people get hung up with getting shadow details when they're unimportant

Here's an example. Does anyone care if the bark of the trees is black? In fact, does the blackness make a more dramatic picture?

Where are you looking at those pictures? Your computer screen? Your TV? That’s your first mistake. Go look at real prints and you’ll see far fewer shadows that have no detail. I’m surprised at how frequently this discussion comes up, and it’s always about Ansel Adams pictures for some reason.

 

[eli griggs]

I would be surprised if there were no Adam's prints near you.

He made so many (with assistants) that when he died, as I recall, that when the true number of each print was found out, some buyers became irate at what large amounts of money they had paid for his work.

 

[250swb]

Why is all this the "poor man's" previsualization? Do wealthy individuals have a different method? Maybe an assistant who figures it all out for them?

I take it to mean that once you've got the Zone System under your hat the experience can be cherry picked, short circuited, or edited into strategies that aren't quite the full Zone System, or even a fraction of it, but what you've learned still influences the exposure and how you'll translate that into the developer, print, or scan. If I'm out with a medium format camera and I take a light reading that is the point I start to think about not just the exposure but how the developer will also influence both the exposure and how it will influence the picture I want. It's not perfect but a roll of film is never going to be perfect for every exposure, but at least it's thinking ahead proactively.

 

[eli griggs]

I look for a true black and a true, clean white, in my negatives, as the basics of being able to use a certain film and developer to give me the density of a good rendering in a grade 3 FB paper in Ansco 130, normal darkroom temperature, for total 'development' pegged at three minutes. or at least that's my targeted goal.

I should go ahead and reshoot my roll films (B&W) with white, middle grey and true black examples and begin to reacquaint myself to both new film stocks and differences in the chemistry I use, both film and papers, particularly VC poly with enlarger contrast filters.

If nothing else, it'll be fun tunning the stuff as a new format record keeping log.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Being not the new Ansel Adams (check my previous posts...) and above all not having a darkrooom at my disposal right now, wanted to ask you if there are pre-measured tables or something of the kind where I can tell, for a given film (especially b/w) if, given a delta of x stops from middle grey, I will have detail or not? Maybe for a certain type of paper, which then I can translate into monitor viewing (I target monitors invariably)?

How about this one?

 

[albada]

How about this one?

Ralph, where did you obtain those print-densities? I ask because I read them from your excellent book, Way Beyond Monochrome, and put them into my enlarger-controller, thus allowing me to place easel-meter readings onto zones on the print. It works great -- I can read a spot on the easel, and place it on a zone. I can even place two readings on two zones, thus also determining contrast (grade), as well as exposure. But I've always been curious where those zone-densities came from.

 

[BrianShaw]

I would be surprised if there were no Adam's prints near you.

He made so many (with assistants) that when he died, as I recall, that when the true number of each print was found out, some buyers became irate at what large amounts of money they had paid for his work.

It’s not just number of prints. He printed the same negative differently at different points in his life. The variation of prints from the same negative can be quite profound.

 

[nmp]

It’s not just number of prints. He printed the same negative differently at different points in his life. The variation of prints from the same negative can be quite profound.

He later termed that as re-visualization...

 

[pentaxuser]

Well here we are at 5:20 pm BST some 4 days and 8 hours after the OP made his thread and nearly 4 days after he made his last post where it appears he got everything he wanted by then.

I have a terrible feeling that the definitions or origins of visualisation, pre-visualisation, re-visualisation and whether this was down to Ansel or Minor may be things he does not regard as terribly germane to what he needs

pentaxuser

 

[DREW WILEY]

Alan and others - AA had quite a few flawed negatives. Famous examples include "Moonrise, Hernadez, NM", which had blotchy skies due to the unevenness of water bath development, his "Gates of the Valley" in Yosemite, where the negative was damaged by putting out a fire in his studio, and his Lone Pine dawn shot where there was a prominent "LP" rock arrangement up on a hillside he didn't want, so literally abraded it from the negative. To disguise those kinds of issues, it was necessary to print the affected portions of the negative pure black, or nearly so. But that also lended more of the dramatic effect many people like. But he didn't use solid black for a conspicuous graphic effect like Brett Weston was famous for.

As far as editioning goes, there was a time when you could buy TEN mounted AA 8x10 prints in the gift shop in Yos Valley (Best Studio, owned by his father-in-law) for $40. That's $4 per print, and even factoring inflation, was a relative bargain. But those were just certain images darkroom mass-produced by his assistants, and were typically signed by him simply, AA, and not his complete signature.

Modern mass-produced editions are all over the map, anywhere from just OK posters and postcards to really high quality press work.

He was an influential teacher and notable photographer, and a key player in both the National Parks movement and acceptance of photographer as a fine art. But I don't know why anyone would hold him up as some kind of ultimate standard of either exposure or printing. Yeah, I know the Zone System pretty well myself; but it was just too small and confining a shirt size for me, and I left it behind in the rear view mirror long ago.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

How about this one?

Ralph what does the chart tells us, especially the monitor column?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

He later termed that as re-visualization.

I call it correcting my mistakes.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Where are you looking at those pictures? Your computer screen? Your TV? That’s your first mistake. Go look at real prints and you’ll see far fewer shadows that have no detail. I’m surprised at how frequently this discussion comes up, and it’s always about Ansel Adams pictures for some reason.

Let's forget about the prints for now. Just look at the photo on your screen. Does the tree trunks and other areas that are black make the picture look better or worse? Does it matter if you were able to see more details or can the photo stand on its own?

 

[nmp]

I call it correcting my mistakes.

They don't have to be mistakes - times change, your tastes change. The same image can be re-interpreted accordingly. Call it artistic evolution.

 

[Mike Lopez]

Let's forget about the prints for now. Just look at the photo on your screen. Does the tree trunks and other areas that are black make the picture look better or worse? Does it matter if you were able to see more details or can the photo stand on its own?

I'll simply quote one of my favorite photographers and instructors in response: every square millimeter of the picture counts. There are no areas (zero, NONE) in the print that "don't matter." I know you don't see it that way, and that there are parts of pictures that you don't care about, and that's fine--your tastes are your tastes.

And in hindsight, I believe you answered your own question in the first four words you typed in post #56.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Alan and others - AA had quite a few flawed negatives. Famous examples include "Moonrise, Hernadez, NM", which had blotchy skies due to the unevenness of water bath development, his "Gates of the Valley" in Yosemite, where the negative was damaged by putting out a fire in his studio, and his Lone Pine dawn shot where there was a prominent "LP" rock arrangement up on a hillside he didn't want, so literally abraded it from the negative. To disguise those kinds of issues, it was necessary to print the affected portions of the negative pure black, or nearly so. But that also lended more of the dramatic effect many people like. But he didn't use solid black for a conspicuous graphic effect like Brett Weston was famous for.

As far as editioning goes, there was a time when you could buy TEN mounted AA 8x10 prints in the gift shop in Yos Valley (Best Studio, owned by his father-in-law) for $40. That's $4 per print, and even factoring inflation, was a relative bargain. But those were just certain images darkroom mass-produced by his assistants, and were typically signed by him simply, AA, and not his complete signature.

Modern mass-produced editions are all over the map, anywhere from just OK posters and postcards to really high quality press work.

He was an influential teacher and notable photographer, and a key player in both the National Parks movement and acceptance of photographer as a fine art. But I don't know why anyone would hold him up as some kind of ultimate standard of either exposure or printing. Yeah, I know the Zone System pretty well myself; but it was just too small and confining a shirt size for me, and I left it behind in the rear view mirror long ago.

Ok then let's discuss Brett Weston's blacks. How does the Zone system figure in there when he's looking to get blacks and heighten contrast? Why do so many people get hung up on wanting to see details in shadow areas? (Note that digital photographers make just a big deal about it maybe more.)

My feeling is that work should be based on the aesthetic you want from it. Just because technology allows you to squeeze details out of shadow areas, doesn't mean that's what you ought to do. Otherwise, we're allowing technology to dictate art rather than our hearts and minds.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I'll simply quote one of my favorite photographers and instructors in response: every square millimeter of the picture counts. There are no areas (zero, NONE) in the print that "don't matter." I know you don't see it that way, and that there are parts of pictures that you don't care about, and that's fine--your tastes are your tastes.

And in hindsight, I believe you answered your own question in the first four words you typed in post #56.

I suppose I wasn't clear, Mike. I never said shadow areas or other areas of a picture don't count. The point is that seeing details in them may not be necessary or may make the picture worse. Black areas heighten contrast and have artistic qualities on their own. Brightening up shadow areas to see details better may pull your eye away from the more important areas. You have to look at a picture as a whole.

We should judge what to do on an artistic basis and not whether technology allows it. People who use HDR and show flat pictures and all the details everywhere so you can see all details throughout the picture are hurting their photos. There's little contrast; nothing "pops". Boring.

 

[Mike Lopez]

Brightening up shadow areas to see details better may pull your eye away from the more important areas. You have to look at a picture as a whole.

Pray tell, how do I know what the "more important areas" of a picture are? Everything counts, and everything in the picture adds up to a whole. There are no degrees of importance. Again, we disagree on this. That's fine.

You say that you never said shadow areas don't count, but you've repeatedly said that they are "unimportant" (post #56), you've asked "does it matter" whether anyone can see detail in the shadows (post #70), and you've said "who cares," and asked whether "anyone cares." (Post #56 again). I think your own words have made your views clear enough, and now it's just semantics ("don't count" vs. "who cares," "they're unimportant," etc., etc.).