I get a great kick out of going into the "woods" with zoneies. I wander around and take maybe two incident readings. One in the shade and one in the light. That's all I need unless the light changes. Generally at that point I apply the HVFF to any subsequent exposures.
After several hours I will have created 8 or 9 very well exposed, creative and hopefully expressive images. The zonieies will have exposed maybe 2 or 3 AA wannabe images. What with all that spot meter waving and note taking it's a wonder they got that many.
Each to their own though. We do what we do because that's what our temperament finds enjoyable and rewarding.
Recently, I've been using a digital camera as a meter. Once the histogram is set and the picture looks right in the LED display, I add a half stop for negative film and reduce by half a stop for chromes.
I used to pre-visualize my girlfriends. But they never seemed to live up to my expectations.As long as one puts most of one's emphasis on the "visualization" (or for Minor White devotees, "pre-visualization") parts of Zone System lore, one can gain lots of benefit from it.
I expect that Wynn Bullock already had that part internalized.
Agreed, and already being familiar with the materials, he was already to go...not test.As long as one puts most of one's emphasis on the "visualization" (or for Minor White devotees, "pre-visualization") parts of Zone System lore, one can gain lots of benefit from it.
I expect that Wynn Bullock already had that part internalized.
* In case you’re wondering what I mean, look up “Schoenberg is Dead” – an essay Pierre Boulez wrote immediately after the death of Arnold Schoenberg. BTW, Ansel Adams, a pianist, didn't like his music or anything contemporary.
There are interesting parallels to be made here, not only between Schoenberg's development of the 12-tone technique and Adams' zone system, but also in the increasing depth of experimentation by those who followed them - from Schoenberg and Berg to Boulez and Babbitt for serialism, and, similarly, those who still dive into zone system research years after Adams' death, and, I believe, much deeper than he would have thought possible or even necessary.
I wonder how much Ansel was influenced by serialism. I'm sure he knew Schoenberg's work and his theory of harmony which is very philosophical and opinionated.
Adams stopped playing the piano seriously in the early 20s, at a time when Schoenberg was just developing the compositional technique. After that, twelve-tone music, as well as serialism, weren't widely performed. There was no wide spread dissemination of these ideas, and if you weren't close to academia, you would never hear about them - same way, in fact, that the great majority of people who had a camera never heard of the zone system.
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End wound up making some those famous prints in the darkroom, entirely altering negative he was so "obsessed" getting right? He was a composer all right, wrote the score, then went on stage and improvised the hell out of it. Yes, it takes skill to do that. It also proves a lot of people get hung up on Zone System and end up in all the same mediocrity. All too often the intended message is written between the lines. General understanding though of Zone System is the premise: learn it and your photographs will be better. I don't know if lack of actual visual improvement drives users into more testing, but possibly part of their problem.he thought of visualization in the manner of a composer:
I suppose you know anything described as "artistic" falls squarely into subjective territory and everyone is correct?I performed Schoenberg's piano pieces op. 11 ages ago, as well as his wonderful Fantasy for violin and piano. Also briefly worked on Boulez's 3rd piano sonata but didn't go very far with that endeavor.
There are interesting parallels to be made here, not only between Schoenberg's development of the 12-tone technique and Adams' zone system, but also in the increasing depth of experimentation by those who followed them - from Schoenberg and Berg to Boulez and Babbitt for serialism, and, similarly, those who still dive into zone system research years after Adams' death, and, I believe, much deeper than he would have thought possible or even necessary.
Doesn't always make for great photographs? Who cares. Neither does sunny 16 - to wit, the immense amount of phenomenally boring "sunny-sixteen-ed" so-called "street" photographs that one sees on various websites and forums that are without any kind of artistic merit whatsoever (and I include my own in the lot).
I have a few of these "beyond", "way beyond", "extremely beyond", "beyondest" the Zone System. I find them fascinating, have learned from them, and none have incited me to become a zone system monk, elevate a shrine to AA and stop actually going out to shoot stuff.
Thing I don't get is why any conversation about the zone system quickly veers into one about the artistic merits of Adams' photographs (hint: it's not), the zone system itself being some sort of secret Templar (the knights, not Simon) handshake, or having its practitioners' interests being sarcastically dismissed (hint: some of them are actually pretty good photographers). I could understand if you had armies of Zone System Zealots invading forums trying to convert sunny-sixteeners, but that's not the case. There is not cult. It's just another way of looking at what's in front of you.
As a formally trained musician, I instantly recognized the Zone System as an adaptation of chord analysis.
The zone system is a method, nothing else, it could work or not for you (including visualization).
As for Zone System and its promoters / practitioners: I don't recall a single one who actually admitted it isn't the recipe for greatness (or at least significant improvement).
Zone System is certainly good to know, at least know what & how it can do it (or says it will). It helps understand processing aspects as well as all the before and after exposure steps. But once it sinks in to imagine precise greatness of the final outcome, the message is lost. Those who know of Ansel Adams as Zone System promoter and then see it as a sure way to make better photographs, have either not read his all, or selectively skipped some quite critical points he made over time, often indirectly.
Exactly. It's probably many others who figured they can outdo AA in ZS lecturing, who created misconceptions about it. Many of them claiming how their ZS way is easier, better, and results are sure to follow.This is spot on (pun intended). I think people who are curious about Adams and the zone system shouldn't start with the celebrated trilogy, but rather with Examples - The Making of 40 Photographs. Not only do you understand better what he was after as a photographer, but you also understand more clearly that he didn't view the zone system as the perfect system. In Adams' writings there are a lot more of "I should/could have done this", "another way of doing it would have been this", etc., then people think. You also find quite often immense praise for non-zone-system photographers.
Yet according to that thread leading transcript, Adams didn't think so. Seems like Bullock himself figured it was not giving him any help he had probably never needed in the first place.Agreed, and already being familiar with the materials, he was already to go...not test.
It's probably many others who figured they can outdo AA in ZS lecturing, who created misconceptions about it.
BINGO!!Why do you have to see what's in the shadows?
Why do you have to see what's in the shadows?
Why do you have to see what's in the shadows?
There are many of Ansel Adams photos where Shadows are completely black. It depends upon arsthetics. We shouldn't just do a knee-jerk reaction to provide Shadow detail unless it really make sense to provide it.You don't have to and you wouldn't be able to if you have not captured the shadow details.
As an experiment, take any of the well-known works of Ansel Adams from the web. With the help of an image editor, manipulate the image to show no shadow detail. Compare this version with the original and ask yourself whether the shadow details make any difference.
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