Why do you think Ansel Adams is better known than William Mortensen?

[DREW WILEY]

Hi Michael - a perfect photo? That is like a purrrrfect ball of yarn the cat got ahold of. (I was just playing with the kitten and some string outside.) There are many potential ways to either tango or tangle with that concept. I once had a pricey gallery owner tell me he wasn't interesting in anything unless it evidenced some kind of flaw - that is, eccentricity or odd mentality. He refused to look at my portfolio, and in his gallery he featured images like Mortensen concocted. But I came back several months later in disguise, with torn up jeans and my hair green and spiky, looking like a serious "artiste". I was also deliberately rude to him this time - everyone knows all real artistes are alcoholic rebels (or potheads today). He offered me a show without ever even seeing my work. So it was my turn to refuse him. I can't stand that kind of air-headed mentality.

There was also classic work in that gallery. He had quite a few Wynn Bullock contact prints, for example - a very skilled printmaker. And he eventually put two and two together and offered me a showing as long as it could be billed as a Cibachrome exhibit, which was still relatively novel. Nope, I wouldn't go for that either. Novelty for sake of novelty is equally air-headed. What really polarized me was walking into their back room, where framing was done. I always did my own framing. There, lying around the floor under a leaky roof were rare prints by Manuel Alverez Bravo, water-stained. After that experience, I learned to always first check the back room and insurance policy of an gallery I was interested in doing business with. More than half flunked. One man's "perfect print" is another man's opportunity to quickly ruin it.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Fun anecdote. We encounter sea palms quite often around here on rocks at very low tides, and are not far from where Bullock would have photographed them. I have that picture in a book, but having seen an original print too, can reiterate that an actual print would be something to covet.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

And what about post-visualization ... The great disillusionment thereafter ?

Yep. Or disappointment. But if I lucky, I could extract what I pre-visualized through struggle and hard work after the shot is taken.

 

[removed account4]

Right, but I'm sorry, Minor White's term is nonsense

it all seems like nonsense.
sure you are familiar enough with your materials you
know what you are doing, you manipulate the hell out of your film
so you can later manipulate the hell out of your paper.
its like knowing what mallet and chisel to use. I think its kind of funny
how photographers always have to have some sort of mysterious mumbojumbo about what they are doing.
when they are just exposing their film and making a print... the whole visualization and hocus pocus is like
knowing first how to proof your yeast and how to mix your dough, and what pan to put it in
and then what rack to put the bread on in the oven so it doesn't burn.

 

[removed account4]

Perhaps he simply thought pre-visualization was a thing.

maybe .. not sure never knew or talked to him . I did have a run-in with a quite-drunk-someone who claimed to be "his assistant" when I lived in somerville/medford.
If I had a time machine, I'd ask him .. but then again I learned later "assistant" sort of meant he worked as part of the MIT custodial staff..
I had a roommate in college who cold draw and paint like nobody else I have ever met.
he saw the thing finished when it was a black piece of paper and he was just drawing what he already saw, maybe I am not giving
the whole pre/post visualization thing enough validity, maybe its like my roommate. makes me wonder though how many people
who use that system actually know their materials well enough that they can actually see the finished print before they push the shutter.
im sure if I ask 10, 9 will say they do, but in actuality it is probably 1 and the rest are wishful thinking...

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

2 books from my photography book collection. Adams book I studied in college. After 30+ years practicing photography using the Zone System, I bought Mortensen’s book. 30 years ago, I was a wide-eyed photography student. Now, I'm just as curious about photography. One book is not better than the other. Just different. Mortensen's book is a lot harder to fine than Ansel Adam's book.

 

[Vaughn]

A visual pun! So fitting!

 

[warden]

A visual pun! So fitting!

I missed it until you brought it up!

 

[Wayne]

It was actually Mortensen Next to The Negative

 

[Helge]

2 books from my photography book collection. Adams book I studied in college. After 30+ years practicing photography using the Zone System, I bought Mortensen’s book. 30 years ago, I was a wide-eyed photography student. Now, I'm just as curious about photography. One book is not better than the other. Just different. Mortensen's book is a lot harder to fine than Ansel Adam's book. View attachment 266077

Could you give us a short rundown of the main points in Mortensen?

 

[Vaughn]

It was actually Mortensen Next to The Negative

And as always, it depends on one's POV.

 

[Wayne]

I've heard of Adams getting beside himself over Mortensen on The Negative

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Could you give us a short rundown of the main points in Mortensen.

I got the book on eBay a couple of weeks ago. I’m better versed with Adams. From what I read so far, both have the same foundations of exposure and development in producing negatives. I think there are only differences in aesthetic philosophy. Mortensen mentions film developed to “gamma infinity". Film developed long as possible. I think today, this means stand or semi-stand development. I'm sure there are limitations with both. For me, Learning both allows more options, depending what I want. I think both are views are valid.

 

[Wayne]

I got the book on eBay a couple of weeks ago. I’m better versed with Adams. From what I read so far, both have the same foundations of exposure and development in producing negatives. I think there are only differences in aesthetic philosophy. Mortensen mentions film developed to “gamma infinity". Film developed long as possible. I think today, this means stand or semi-stand development. I'm sure there are limitations with both. For me, Learning both allows more options, depending what I want. I think both are views are valid.

I've only done stand a couple times and am no expert on it, but I think the main goal in using it are "edge effects" not gamma infinity. I don't think these are equivalent at all, but will leave that to the techies to debate

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I've only done stand a couple times and am no expert on it, but I think the main goal in using it are "edge effects" not gamma infinity. I don't think these are equivalent at all, but will leave that to the techies to debate

I'm not an expert on Mortensen since I just got the book. But I'm sure there will be experts willing to enlighten us.

 

[Helge]

I got the book on eBay a couple of weeks ago. I’m better versed with Adams. From what I read so far, both have the same foundations of exposure and development in producing negatives. I think there are only differences in aesthetic philosophy. Mortensen mentions film developed to “gamma infinity". Film developed long as possible. I think today, this means stand or semi-stand development. I'm sure there are limitations with both. For me, Learning both allows more options, depending what I want. I think both are views are valid.

Thanks Maine.
Ansel had a way of making himself into THE authority on anything. Even if he only dabbled.
His peice on flash-use is borderline embarrassing.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Isn't one of Mortensen's method is expose for the highlights and let the shadows fall where they may? If that's true, it's counters what Adam's taught and the norm of what photographers have been taught for decades. Again, I just got the book and I'm no expert on his method.

 

[macfred]

I think this gives a very good overview of Mortensen on the Negative https://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Mortensen/mortensen.html

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Thanks Maine.
Ansel had a way of making himself into THE authority on anything. Even if he only dabbled.
His peice on flash-use is borderline embarrassing.

I really don't know if he made himself the authority or his followers. I've met photographers think he is God and hang on his every word in his books. I'm not one of them. To me, it's form of fundamentalism and doesn't allow a dissent or the voice of the photographer in the work. I had a college photo professor that was a total slave to the Zone System. He'd shoot 35mm and have one "N" camera, one N+ camera and one N- camera.

 

[Helge]

I really don't know if he made himself the authority or his followers. I've met photographers think he is God and hang on his every word in his books. I'm not one of them. To me, it's form of fundamentalism and doesn't allow a dissent or the voice of the photographer in the work. I had a college photo professor that was a total slave to the Zone System. He'd shoot 35mm and have one "N" camera, one N+ camera and one N- camera.

It’s a dynamic relationship.
Ansel was wise and lucky in pushing himself as an authority through writing, influential friends and works that was finely tuned to be just the right amount of new and old.
And he didn’t try to tamp down mounting deification of him, even if it involved his more mundane endeavors.

 

[Alan Johnson]

https://archive.org/details/cameracraft441937phot/page/206/mode/2up
This article was written a few years before "Mortensen on the Negative"
See eg, p208, exposure for the light areas and development to gamma infinity, p211 using "projection control" [enlarging] the dark area can be printed in.
And a few swipes at the technicians maybe including the f64 group.

 

[Vaughn]

It might be good to consider the images themselves and what was desired by the artist/photographer. Many of Mortensen's images were printed primarily on non-glossy and/or textured stock...where the lack of shadow detail in the negative is not critical to the over-all image. It might be better to say Mortensen used those small detail-less shadow areas creatively as a matt-black with a paper texture, and preserved the warm highlights with good control. AA seemed to wish to preserve those shadow details on the negative and carefully take advantage of the clean glossy whites of the photopaper. I am not surprised they approached the negative a bit little differently.

Mortensen's article linked above sounds like what most people get around to saying here when negatives get discussed.

My approach to negatives is a bit different than most, but just because my printing requirements are much different than most (film-based alt. processes). Light is light, film is film and so forth -- all variations of a theme....can't be too different.

 

[juan]

I looked into Mortensen years ago and found a description of how he was developing negatives at one time. It used a somewhat dilute glycin only developer. I remember I used one of those J&C developing tubes for 8x10. Stood the tube in the refrigerator for about 12-hours. It developed the negative completely and made a nice Azo contact print, but my scanner really struggled with it.

 

[Helge]

Mortensen from the above linked article:

“With the rise of photography there has also arisen a large volunteer corps of self-designated "experts." To all of these the amateur abandons himself with indiscriminate enthusiasm. Yet you may be very sure that this same amateur would not go to the plumber or the blacksmith to have his automobile repaired.
Therefore, it is well to add a third question to those that I have suggested. This is it:
3. Who says so?
What, in other words, are the qualifications of this so-eloquent author? Is he a physician? Or a physicist? Is he an ex-realtor? Or a veterinary surgeon? Or does he know this business of picture-making by actual experience?
It is perhaps inevitable in the nature of things that photographic amateurs should be Babes in the Woods. But let them at least be Hard- Boiled Babes. Let them cultivate a salutary skepticism and learn to lift a dubious eyebrow and to say "Oh yeah?" when the perspiring "experts" throng around them with advice.”
​

I like his style. ;-)

 

[removed account4]

https://archive.org/details/cameracraft441937phot/page/206/mode/2up
This article was written a few years before "Mortensen on the Negative"
See eg, p208, exposure for the light areas and development to gamma infinity, p211 using "projection control" [enlarging] the dark area can be printed in.
And a few swipes at the technicians maybe including the f64 group.

LOL
great article, funny it is from 1937, he sounds like he has been reading photrio or apug over the years.

It developed the negative completely and made a nice Azo contact print, but my scanner really struggled with it.

I have film that wasn't processed for 12 hours but its bullet proof none the less, and its made some of the most beautiful contact prints I have printed. they were't on azo but were made with my 300RW azo printing bulb... Kodak polymax rc paper 15 second exposures.. my scanner doesn't like many films processed denser than medium-rare.

 

[Vaughn]

Same here -- with strong backlight (more than the average light table) I could barely see discreet information through the otherwise 'blocked-up' highlights (sunlight on white granite). A six-hour exposure for the carbon print pulled all that detail out without losing the brillence of the granite -- or the shadow detail in the recesses under the rocks along the creek. I tried another print at 10 hours, but accidently trashed the negative. One great print, though!