Inight into Ansel Adams from his son
I try to keep an eye on any commentary about Ansel Adams because I consider him an inspiration. Today, I found a blog entry labeled ‘“Moon Over Hernandez” An insight into Ansel Adams’ about my favorite photographer. Imagine my delight to find it was a video of an interview with his son from a blog entry ‘ A Visit to Ansel Adams’ Home’ which was published last year at silberstudios.tv. How I missed it, I don’t know, but I’m glad to have found it.
Don’t expect any profound revelations, they’re not here, but do expect some interesting insight into Ansel’s work on one of his most famous photographs, ‘Moonrise, Hernandez , New Mexico‘. One of the interesting insights provided by his son, who was there when the picture was taken, was how much work Ansel did to create the masterpiece we see. He shows how the photo looked when printed straight as well as Ansel’s notes about how he modified the image in the darkroom. Looking at the difference just heightens my conviction that Ansel Adams would have taken wholeheartedly to the Digital Darkroom and would have been a master at it, setting the standard for craftsmanship.
For me, one of the major points here, illustrated by the video, is the mastery of every phase of the process. Many people I’ve talked to seem to be under the impression that Adams never did anything more than minor touch up work, that the images were complete in the camera except for necessary spotting and such. This video shows clearly how this isn’t the case.
The original, unmodified print makes it clear that ‘Moonrise’ started with an image that in itself wasn’t very impressive. Once in the darkroom, Adams worked on the image step-by-step until he was able to produce the image he wanted. The video doesn’t address it, but it seems clear that Adams visualization of the image was far more than what you can see on the bare print.
I’m sure Adams would point out that you can’t take just any image and turn it into a masterpiece, but even a masterpiece evolves through a process that brings out the potential through craftsmanlike handling of the artist’s tools. What’s more, his notes about what he did could serve as guidelines to reproduce what he did in making additional prints. Even with all of our automated tools available to us, a plain, old-fashioned notebook can still provide useful insight to help us learn from our mistakes or to reproduce what needs to be done.
I have to admit that my personal favorites among Adams images are mountains such as his photos of the Tetons:
but I can’t think of any of his images that I don’t admire. I can get lost in his images, always finding something new.
One of my favorite pastimes is trying to ‘visualize in reverse’, a habit Adams suggested. Starting with a photograph, I try to see the scene as the photographer saw it, then try to re-visualize it for myself. How would I have visualized the scene and captured it to realize my visualization? Adams himself advocates doing that as one of the many ways of learning to visualize.