![\"Frozen](\"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/frozen_lake_cliffs.jpg\" "\\"Frozen")
<\/a><\/p>\nI\u2019ve always been a fan of this Ansel Adams classic.\u00a0\u00a0 For me it has a feeling of immensity and majesty.\u00a0 So it\u00a0 has a special meaning to me reading about it in \u201cExamples.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 A few things caught my attention in Adams\u2019 narrative\u2026<\/p>\n
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For one, it recalled the days of film photography where we didn\u2019t have light meters and guessed at the exposures.\u00a0 Such was the case when Adams took this photograph in 1932.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t yet developed the Zone System which would have guaranteed a perfect negative.\u00a0 So he underexposed a \u2018normal\u2019 exposure by one stop but the shadowy cliffs were still underexposed and the ice on the lake way overexposed.\u00a0 To make matters worse, when he developed the negative he didn\u2019t use fresh developer so the negative was nearly ruined.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until the 1970s that he finally had the right paper and techniques to reproduce the feeling of awe that inspired him to trip the shutter.<\/p>\n
Adams refers to Group f\/64 in the narrative.\u00a0\u00a0 Group f\/64 was formed by a small group of Western photographers to counter Pictorialism that was the predominant approach of the time to \u201cphotography as art.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 One characteristic of Pictorialism was soft images.\u00a0 Also, Pictorialism combined painting and photographic techniques, subscribing to a commonly held opinion that photography on its own could not be art.\u00a0 Group f\/64 took the opposite stance \u2013 that photographs should be sharp throughout (hence the f\/64 in the group\u2019s name, the aperture setting that ensured maximum depth of field), exploit the full tonal range of the medium and, most importantly, photography in and of itself could be art.<\/p>\n
Regarding what must have been a non-traditional composition for its time, Adams said, \u201cMany speak of this image as being abstract, but I was not conscious of any such definition at the time.\u00a0 I prefer the term extract<\/em> over abstract,<\/em>\u2026.\u00a0 For photographic compositions I think in terms of creating configurations out of chaos, rather than following any conventional rules of composition.\u201d\u00a0 He then goes on to quote Edward Weston, a personal friend and fellow Group f\/64 member, \u201ccomposition is the strongest way of seeing.\u201d\u00a0 The important thing is his composition expressed \u201cthe monumental qualities of the subject that I responded to so intensely at first sight.\u201d<\/p>\n Adams wasn\u2019t the only photographer standing there on the shore of Precipice Lake that fine day.\u00a0 But he was the only one that saw this composition.\u00a0 He touches on one of the things that makes fine art photography so fascinating and so personal.\u00a0 \u201cI am interested in why I see certain events in the world about me that others do not see, while they respond to different events.\u201d\u00a0 I see this all the time at workshops. You have a dozen or so people photographing the same location and later when we review the photographs each has his or her own unique and very personal vision.<\/p>\n \u201cWith all art expression, when something is seen, it is a vivid experience, sudden, compelling, and inevitable.\u00a0 The visualization is complete, the seemingly instant review of all the mental and imaginative resources called forth\u00a0 by some miracle of the mind-computer that we do not comprehend,\u00a0 For me this resource is not of things consciously seen or transcriptions of musical recollections; it is, perhaps, a summation of total experience and instinct.\u00a0 Nothing modifies or replaces it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n This is part of a continuing series on Ansel Adam\u2019s wonderful book \u201cExamples \u2013 The Making of 40 Photographs.\u201d\u00a0 Don\u2019t miss any more posts.\u00a0 Scroll to \u201cSubscribe to Blog via Email\u201d on the right and enter your email address.\u00a0 We will keep it strictly confidential.<\/p>\n Here are some of the previous posts.<\/p>\n The Same Ol’ Question<\/a><\/p>\n Ansel Adams – The Making of 40 Photographs<\/a><\/p>\n Join me on an upcoming workshop.\u00a0 Click here for more details.<\/a><\/p>\n To see more of my photographs click here.<\/a><\/p>\n WordPress Tags: Ansel<\/a>,Adams<\/a>,Frozen<\/a>,Lake<\/a>,photography<\/a>,System<\/a>,exposure<\/a>,paper<\/a>,Group<\/a>,narrative<\/a>,Western<\/a>,Pictorialism<\/a>,images<\/a>,Also<\/a>,opinion<\/a>,stance<\/a>,aperture<\/a>,depth<\/a>,composition<\/a>,Many<\/a>,image<\/a>,definition<\/a>,chaos<\/a>,rules<\/a>,Edward<\/a>,Weston<\/a>,friend<\/a>,member<\/a>,qualities<\/a>,subject<\/a>,Precipice<\/a>,events<\/a>,world<\/a>,location<\/a>,vision<\/a>,visualization<\/a>,miracle<\/a>,computer<\/a>,resource<\/a>,recollections<\/a>,summation<\/a>,instinct<\/a>,Cliffs<\/a>,meters<\/a>,exposures<\/a>,techniques<\/a>,compositions<\/a>,transcriptions<\/a>,didn’t<\/a>,wasn’t<\/a><\/p>\n (2265)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Explore with me Ansel Adam’s comments on the making of “Frozen Lake and Cliffs.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,471],"tags":[141,385,32,544,537,126,552,542,545,266,551,536,539,538,543,549,547,550,434,134,13,541,546,231,269,507,548,540,514],"class_list":["post-2563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","category-making-a-photograph","tag-ansel-adams","tag-aperture","tag-california","tag-chaos","tag-cliffs","tag-composition","tag-compositions","tag-depth-of-field","tag-edward-weston","tag-exposure","tag-exposures","tag-frozen-lake","tag-group-f-64","tag-group-f64","tag-image","tag-instinct","tag-kaweah-gap","tag-light-meters","tag-mountains","tag-paper","tag-photography","tag-pictorialism","tag-precipice-lake","tag-sierra-nevada","tag-techniques","tag-vision","tag-visualization","tag-western-photographers","tag-zone-system"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-Fl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2563"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4686,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563\/revisions\/4686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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