Tag: Zone System

Photography as Art – A Brief History

A brief history of photography as art from its beginning in the mid 1800s to the impact of computational photography and artificial intelligence.

Back in the mid 1800s photography was just born.  New advances were made in rapid order.  All those that saw the amazing photographs were struck with their realism.  Painters who made their livings from portraits saw their businesses shrink virtually overnight, replaced by the camera. 

It was the realism that separated the photograph from the other visual arts.  The generally accepted idea was that photographs could never be art.  And yet, some photographers took exception with that.  They contended that photographs can be art and they borrowed techniques from painters to prove it.  In England, Henry Peach Robinson published his ground-breaking book in 1869, Pictorial Effect in Photography: Being Hints On Composition And Chiaroscuro For Photographers, that powerfully and effectively not only made the case for photography as an art form but provide guidelines on how to accomplish that end.  Pictorialism became a movement that swept European photographers and, in the United States, had Alfred Stieglitz as its most influential proponent and promoter. Even Ansel Adams had his Pictorialism period.

While pictorialism was many things, one of the defining qualities was a soft focus to reproduce the effect generally seen with paint on canvas.  Composite images made from more than one negative were also very common and well accepted, even demanded.  But the main intent was to create photographs that went beyond realism and elicited an emotional response in the viewer.

Photography continued to evolve as an art form along with Modernism and the social and intellectual movement it spawned.  Group f/64, founded by William Van Dyke and Ansel Adams in the San Francisco area, rejected the notion that fine art photography must have a soft focus.  Adams, upon meeting with Stieglitz in New York, convince him that photographs of the natural world that were in sharp focus were also art. 

Not only that, but Adams also developed the Zone system that brought a high degree of precision and accuracy, providing photographers with great control through the interpretive decisions they made in each step of the photographic process.  One can get insights into the numerous decisions from Adams’ insightful book Examples: the making of 40 photographs.  The path shaped by each decision they made took them to the final print and what they visualized it would convey.  Each photographer was in complete control of the entire process.

Eventually Kodak and other film companies took over the development and printing part of the process.  This removed the investment individuals would have to make not only in the needed equipment, chemicals and time but also the knowledge and experience required to make the decisions that led to the final print. On the one hand, photographers lost control of a good part of the process but on the other hand the masses gained access to this wonderful new technology and the benefits it provided. They delivered the undeveloped film to the lab or the neighborhood photo store and a few days later received the developed negatives and prints.

Exposure was hit and miss for the general population.  The professional and serious enthusiasts used light meters to calculate their exposures.  But the general public just guessed although in many cases their cameras didn’t give them any control over exposure.  It was only a matter of time, however, before camera manufacturers would incorporate light meters in the camera itself.  The first one I ever saw had a gauge with a needle on the top of the body that would move back and forth as the aperture and/or shutter speed was adjusted.  The idea was to line up the needle with the mark in the middle.   The same decisions used with the light meter were essentially incorporated into the camera. Continue reading “Photography as Art – A Brief History”

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Creating Images with Impact – Black Point

Add Impact to your Images by setting a black point. Here’s the how and why.

In this series of blog posts were talking about how to create Images with Impact. You know what I’m talking about. These are those images that really grab our attention, that capture our imaginations. There’s something special about them and it doesn’t have to be a mystery how they are created. There are a few simple techniques that you can use in Lightroom and Photoshop to add impact to your images. Now if you don’t use Photoshop, you can still do everything were talking about in Lightroom.

In the first article we talked about utilizing the full dynamic range of your medium. This is something Ansel Adams taught in his books and classes that was an essential element of his stunning landscape photographs. As he developed his technique which became known as the Zone System, the primary goal was to use the full dynamic range of his medium which, in his case, was the black and white print.

So we talked about that technique first because it is the most appropriate place to start. I do want to add that in color photography or color prints not every print benefits from a white point but virtually all prints benefit from a black point – which is what we want to talk about in this article.

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What exactly is a black point? It is small portions of the print that are pure black. If you’re printing on paper than these are small portions that are the blackest black that the combination of paper and ink can achieve. As a side note, different combinations of paper and ink achieve different levels of blackness. But regardless of the combination you use, the blackest black that can be achieved is your black point.

You want to keep the black point areas very, very small because they have no detail. And generally speaking we like to see detail in our shadows, another guideline that I picked up from studying Ansel Adams. But you don’t want to eliminate black points, that is, in most cases. There are a few exceptions to this rule that I will talk about later.

Let’s take a look at the before and after images of our photograph. I shot this at the Huntington Library in South Pasadena a few weeks ago. It’s in their incredible cactus garden – endlessly fascinating.

Continue reading “Creating Images with Impact – Black Point”

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Taking Your Photography to the Next Level

Our art, photography, can be a rich and rewarding endeavor and an ever fascinating journey of self-discovery. Be open to the possibilities and hone your skills. Become really good at what you do best.

“Did you manipulate your photograph?”  “Did you use a filter?”  “Do you use a Mac?” “Do you crop your images?” “I’ll have a nicer day than you; I’m not shooting a Canon.”  Yes, someone actually said that to me at Bridal Vale Falls in the Columbia River Gorge of Oregon in response to my cheery, “Have a nice day.”  I guess when you take the entire population of photographers you will always find those that are prejudiced and closed minded just like any other population.  They think they are right and anyone that disagrees with them is wrong.  It’s that simple.

The current issue of Lenswork magazine, the premier journal for black and white photography, has an article by guest contributor Jim Kasson titled “Previsualization in the Digital Age.”  I couldn’t wait to read it.  In my workshops and lectures I’ve always advocated that an artist interprets reality and communicates that interpretation through her or his art.  In landscape photography I’ve encouraged our workshop attendees to leave their camera gear in the car until they connect with a location and only then set up their cameras to try to capture what is is they are experiencing.  Previsualization, the anticipation of what the finished work will look like, is a big part of communicating what you are feeling.

Continue reading “Taking Your Photography to the Next Level”

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Ansel Adams – The Making of 40 Photographs: Frozen Lake and Cliffs

Explore with me Ansel Adam’s comments on the making of “Frozen Lake and Cliffs.”

It was in the  ‘70s when I was backpacking through the Kaweah Gap areas of the Sierra Nevada mountains.  We were two days out and came upon this lake.  I instantly recognized it from on of Ansel Adams that I particularly liked – Precipice Lake.  It was exciting and we spent the night there.

Frozen Lake and Cliffs (1932)

I’ve always been a fan of this Ansel Adams classic.   For me it has a feeling of immensity and majesty.  So it  has a special meaning to me reading about it in “Examples.”   A few things caught my attention in Adams’ narrative…

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