In2SciFi

Ansel Adams, Camera & Lens, Morgan & Morgan, 1971, p69.

Ansel Adams talks a lot about Light Meters, primarily because his approach is a combination of science and art, where science is used to enable the art. I don’t think anyone would suggest that he wasn’t an artist because his photographs have been accepted as art from long before his death. So his focus on the science underlying his art must have been useful to him. Primarily, science is based on measurement. Measurement of things that CAN be measured. Unmeasurables can be part of science, but only to the extent they have measurable consequences.

Within photography, the light meter is one of our most important measuring instruments. With older cameras, we needed a separate meter. Most cameras over the last 20 years have meters built in. This is where we run into problems

An interesting question and I’m not the only one to be asking it. David Ziser on his blog Digital Protalk asks the same question. His answer:

You’ve just got to ask yourself the question, “If Ansel Adams was shooting digital, would he have used Lightroom?” I think the obvious answer is “YES”. Why? Because Ansel was a “master manipulator” of film, exposure, processing, chemistry, burning, dodging, printing - all the tools of the analogue image. Had he been shooting digital, he too would have been “master manipulator” of all the digital tools as well.

I can’t agree more.

In fact, I’d go even further and say that tools like Photoshop and Lightroom would have had significant input from Adams, helping to form the direction they would have taken. I think he would have been in on the ground floor with Digital and as it developed, he would have influenced it’s direction. I think he would have experimented with digital picture TAKING as it developed and he would have used scanners as soon as they started to produce images fine enough to satisfy his spirit. However, I don’t know that he would have made the transition completely to digital even now.

I think Ansel Adams would have embraced digital photography and been one of the first to use Photoshop, expanding his use over the years. He once aid “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.” (1983 from http://www.photoquotes.com/ShowQuotes.aspx?id=10&name=Adams,Ansel).

I imagine Adams would have had several digital cameras as well as digital backs for his view cameras. But I also think he would not have given up on film, at least not yet.

On the computer, I think he would have used Photoshop and would have had a meticulous system for tracking his photos.