In2SciFi

We ignore Ansel Adams at our peril. Many people I’ve spoken to see nothing in Adams work remotely comparable with Digital Photography, yet if you take the time to read his works on Polaroid Photography, you’ll quickly come to understand that it was the instantaneous result that most impressed him and made ‘Instant Photography’ an important tool in his arsenal.

Adams book ‘Polaroid Land Photography’ is an excellent treatise on the use of instant photography. Both Adams and Minor White saw the potential in instant photography as early as the 1950’s and worked extensively with it from that time forward. The book was originally published in 1963 and focuses on the role of craftsmanship in the use of Polaroid materials. Much of what he wrote could be rewritten with ‘Digital Photography’ substituted for ‘Polaroid Land Photography’ without loss of meaning. For example, in his chapter on Visualization on p75, we might take

“Obviously, using Polaroid Land films calls for adjusting our image visualization to accommodate the process”

could be rewritten as

“Obviously, using Digital Sensors calls for adjusting our image visualization to accommodate the process”.

It’s my feeling that not only would Ansel Adams have taken to Digital Photography in a big way, but he would have shown us that the Zone System is applicable to Digital photography as well.
I’ve read many authors claiming the Zone System just isn’t applicable to Digital Photography. Michael Freeman in his book Perfect Exposure says: “While the Zone System, as invented, is fairly pointless for digital photography, and completely pointless when shooting Raw, the principle of analyzing scenes and images in zones is a good one.” (P134) Certainly it wouldn’t survive as exposure control tied to a set of chemical processes, but I think Adams would have shown us that it IS applicable if you go back to the conceptual basis for the Zone System itself.

As I see it, what the Zone system is all about is very simply being able to create the print you visualize when you’re standing in front of the scene getting ready to make an exposure. It’s about knowing EVERY step between visualization and print so well that you can accurately see the result in your minds eye when you click the shutter. It doesn’t matter whether the processes are chemical or digital or something else, what matters is that you have such a command of your tools that you can visualize the result and produce it when it comes time to print.

Ansel Adams speaks about “careful craftsmanship” frequently in his books. For him, craftsmanship is basic to good art because you must have command of your tools, whether they’re paint, pencils, camera, or photoshop. You need to know exactly what the effect of each tool is and how one can manipulate it. He’s quite explicit when on page 72 of ‘Polaroid Land Photography’ he says: “Our ability to achieve the desired image will … be limited by our mastery of craft. … craft is the thorough understanding of the process and the facility of expressing this understanding with intuitive efficiency.”

I believe Adams would have embraced digital photography and become an expert in Photoshop. His philosophy was one of total control from the exposure to the final print, and he would have applied that to digital photography by mastering the tools include Adobe Camera Raw, Photoshop, and any other tool he found of interest. He was looking forward to the experience when in 1983 he said:

“I am sure the next step will be the electronic image, and I hope I shall live to see it. I trust that the creative eye will continue to function, whatever technological innovations may develop.” (quote from photoquotes.com)

Unfortunately he died in April, 1984 before he could see Digital Photography really flower into the tool it has become.

To get a feeling for how Ansel would have worked with Digital Photography, I think the best example is Polaroid Land Photography. I’ll be taking some time to see what he has to say later.

One of the best ways to learn to control your tools is to experiment with them. This picture was a set of fairly dull picture taken of some trees during a rainstorm. I stitched together 4 pictures from the bottom to the top of the trees, then applied a curves layer experimenting with the curves to see the impact of local adjustments in specific contrast ranges. Playing like this is what helps you to learn your tools.


Color Experiment

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