Tag: fine art photography

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams brought beauty and inspiration to thousands of people. Read his story and how he became such a beloved photographer.

“I tried to keep both arts alive [concert pianist and landscape photographer], but the camera won.  I found that while the camera does not express the soul, perhaps a photograph can!”  ~ Ansel Adams

The Early Years

On February 20, 1902, Ansel Easton Adams was the only child born to Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray Adams in San Francisco, CA.  His ancestors immigrated from Ireland in the early 1700s and his grandfather was a wealthy timber baron, a business which his father eventually inherited.  It is ironic that Adams detested the timber industry later in life.

Ansel Adams at his Piano

At the age of 4 the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 hit.  The Adams family house made it through the initial quake unscathed, but Adams’ father thought it best if they sit out the aftershocks outside.  A particularly large aftershock caught Adams by surprise, knocking him down.  He landed face down against a brick wall and broke his nose.  A physician suggested that it would be best to wait until Adams matured to set the broken nose.  Later in life, Adams said, “apparently I never matured, as I have yet to see a surgeon about it.”

Adams was a problem child.  He was sickly, sometimes spending as much as a month in bed.  His Aunt Mary gave him books to occupy his time.  One was the Heart of the Sierras which apparently planted an interest in these magnificent mountains in his young mind.

When he started school, he was so rebellious that he got expelled from one school after another.  Finally, when Adams was 12, his father faced the inevitable and withdrew him from school for a year.  A private tutor was hired so that Adams could continue his education.  During his time, he was exposed to the works of the great artists.  This lasted for one year before he returned to Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private School where he graduated from the 8th grade on June 8, 1917.

During this time Adams started playing the piano.  At first, he was self-taught but when he was 12, he started receiving lessons.  The discipline of daily practice apparently helped him to gain some control over his disruptive behavior.  Adams commented about that time.  “The change from a hyperactive Sloppy Joe was not overnight, but was sufficiently abrupt to make some startled people ask, ‘What happened?’ I still recall that the Bach Inventions taxed my concentration, especially when a sunny breeze carrying the sound of the ocean stole through the open window.” As he progressed, his passion for the piano continued to grow so that he planned on becoming a world-class concert pianist. 

However, the tide started to change imperceptibly.  In 1916 he persuaded his “Uncle Frank” to take him to Yosemite, a destination that he was inspired to see from the books his aunt had given him while he laid ill in bed.  And at the same time his father gave him is first camera, an Eastman Kodak Brownie box camera.  It was on that trip that he took his first photographs of Yosemite.  He later commented, “The splendor of Yosemite burst upon us, and it was glorious.  There was light everywhere.  A new era began for me.”  That was the first of an annual pilgrimage to Yosemite that would continue throughout his life.  But he still planned on being a concert pianist.

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Edward Weston

“One does not think during creative work, any more than one thinks when driving a car. But one has a background of years – learning, unlearning, success, failure, dreaming, thinking, experience, all this – then the moment of creation, the focusing of all into the moment. So I can make ‘without thought,’ fifteen carefully considered negatives, one every fifteen minutes, given material with as many possibilities. But there is all the eyes have seen in this life to influence me.”  –  Edward Weston

Note:  Not much of Weston’s photographs are in the public domain.  Therefore, I have include links to his more important photographs so you can enjoy them.

Early Life

On March 24, 1886, Edward Henry Weston was born in Highland Park, Illinois into an intellectual family.  His father, Edward B. Weston, was an obstetrician and his mother, Alice J. Brett, was a Shakespearean actress.  His mother died when he was only five years old and little Edward was raised mostly by his sister Mary who was fourteen years old at the time.  Weston called her “May” or “Maisie.  They would develop a close relationship which lasted throughout the years.

His father remarried when Weston was nine but neither he nor his sister got along with their stepmother or stepbrother.

When Weston was 11, Mary married and relocated from the Midwest to Southern California, settling in Tropico (later renamed to Glendale).  Once Mary left, Weston’s father devoted most of his time to his new wife and her son.  He had no interest in books or school and dropped out.  He also had a lot of time on his hands and spent it mostly by himself in his room.

In 1902, while on vacation on a farm in Michigan, his father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Bulls-Eye No. 2 for his 16th birthday.  His dad included a note which read in part, “you’ll not have to change anything about the Kodak. Always have the sun behind or to the side—never so it shines into the instrument. Don’t be too far from the object you wish to take, or it will be very small. See what you are going to take in the mirror. You can only take twelve pictures, so don’t waste any on things of no interest.”

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Finding the Soul of a Photograph

Finding the soul of a photograph is a journey that can take many paths.

I often get asked if I manipulate my photographs.  My answer is always, “Yes, of course!”  But no one has ever asked, “Why?”  And I have an answer for that too.  “Because my camera doesn’t know what I’m feeling.”

For me, making a photograph is making art. I want to do more than capture where I’ve been and what I’ve seen.  I want to share with you what I feel when I’m out there.  And that is often more intense than what my eyes see.

I was in Long Valley last summer preparing for a photography class I was teaching for the Mount San Jacinto Natural History Association.  It was midday and I was walking around wearing my amber tinted Polaroid sun glasses.  Why do I mention my sun glasses?  Because I was getting very excited about what I was seeing.  And for those of you that know about midday light, it is anything but exciting.  But the amber tint of the glasses and the effect of the polarization on the sky and foliage got me excited.  Added to that was how good it felt to be back in these mountains after an absence of 15 years.

I want to share what I feel…. And that is often more intense than what my eyes see.

So, I asked myself if it was OK to make photographs that reflected my mental state when it contradicted the physical reality of what my eyes saw. 

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Everyone Can Take a Picture but Few Can Make a Photograph

Making a photograph involves much more than ‘point and shoot.’

“Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.”

~ Edward Weston

There are millions of pictures taken every day, every hour even.  They are fun and spontaneous.  They record moments in peoples’ lives.  They are shared on social media and sent in emails. And when viewed later, they bring back memories.

It’s easy to take a picture.  The dominant camera is the smart phone.  Just hold it up and tap the red button.  It takes no time at all and the reward is instantaneous.  It requires no particular skills or training.  It’s easy; anyone can do it.

These pictures will fill the internet’s networks and some may even end up on peoples’ walls or in scrapbooks.  But mostly when shared face to face, it’s from the smart phone’s camera roll.

Making a photograph is not at all like taking a picture.  It’s not easy.  It requires training, experience, special skills and patience.  The rewards are not instantaneous and not everyone can do it.

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Lightroom Tutorial – Diamonds in the Haystack

So you’ve come back from a shoot with hundreds of not thousands of files. How do you find the diamonds in such a large haystack?

I got a comment on a recent post on workflow.  (Lightroom Tutorial – Workflow)

The question was if there was a way in Lightroom to sort through a large number of photographs to select the ones you want to work on.

Here’s the situation.  You’ve just returned from a five day workshop.  And you have a thousand or so photographs.  Now we know that not everyone of these images is a keeper.  Personally, I’m delighted if I get four or five keepers from a five day workshop.  Hey, given the vagaries of weather and light, I’m happy if I get one.

But the prospect of sifting through hundreds and even thousands of images can be a bit overwhelming.  So here’s what I do.

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Great Training DVD

I’m always buying photography books and on the lookout for good DVDs.  I like the books because I can read them at my leisure.  And if they contain assignments at the end of each chapter that’s even better.  DVDs, on the other hand, can be even better because you can see the photographer in action.

But not all DVDs live up to this level of expectation.  Sure, you can get see where the photographers are photographing.  And often you can see what they captured.  But all too often you aren’t privy to what is going through their minds.  Well, I found a DVD that sets the standard.

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