Category Archives: Photographers

Ideas, Photographers, Shows

‘Ansel Adams: Early Works’ at the San Jose Museum of Art

3 Comments
As noted earlier, yesterday I again visited the “Ansel Adams: Early Works” exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. (Yesterday was supposed to be the final day – so if you missed it, I’m afraid you missed it!)

I always see and learn more when I have a chance to revisit work like this, and this was my second visit to this show. One of the wonderful things about it was that most of the photographs were small! This meant that they were presented more intimately, forcing one to look at them in a way different from our typical “monumental photograph” mindset when we look at Adams’ landscapes. In addition, many were from the 1920s (especially) and early 1930s before he adopted the more sharp and high contrast style with which most of us are more familiar.

A few things I came away with:

I’m so impressed with his seemingly atypical photograph of Stieglitz in his gallery in New York, with its beautiful composition and wonderful use of light and tonality. And next to this (small) photograph was a simple quote from Adams that (finally!) crystallized the whole Stieglitz “equivalence” thing for me.

I think I actually liked some of the early prints more than some the later ones, at least in a few cases. Side by side were hung two versions of the famous “Monolith” Half Dome photograph from the Diving Board. One was a small and rather dark early print, and the other was a much larger print made later that exhibits the lighter and brighter appearance. To me, the upper portion of the larger and more famous version has “issues,” especially in the handling of tones near the upper right corner. I think I actually prefer the darker rendition of his earlier print. (I guess that if I could “make my own Adams,” I might start with the darker one and go about 20% of the way towards the lighter one.)

In the “how could I have missed this before” department was my sudden recognition of the obvious parallels between one of his “White House Ruin” photographs (not the more famous one shot from an oblique angle but one shot straight on that even includes a bit of fence in the foreground) and the “Frozen Lake and Cliffs” photograph from Precipice Lake in the Sierra. Not only do both feature similar vertical banded patterns on the predominant rock faces, but both feature small “pyramid” shapes (sun-lit brush in the former and snow in the latter) and contrasting horizontal bands at the bottom of the frame (sunlit ground in the former and the ce/lake in the latter).

I also thought more about the photograph of roots that he made in Hawaii. As I understand it, Adams said that he didn’t really quite connect with Hawaii in the same way he connected with other subjects that he worked with. But this particular photograph – featuring a beautifully lit and composed group of curving roots and some small leaves – is truly wonderful.

Finally, in an odd way it reassures me to see some Ansel Adams prints that seem, how to say this, “not so special.” This is an important reminder of so many things: How astonishing it is when truly amazing work emerges from the background of lesser work; reaffirmation that no artist just creates great stuff – failure (often a lot of it!) is necessary as well; and a clearer sense of the humanity of Adams.

Sorry you missed it!

Commentary, Ideas, Photographers

Two Photographers: Two Videos

3 Comments

I came across a couple of interesting videos of photographers on the web today.

The first is a wonderful video of Michael Kenna photographing in the snow in Hokkaido, Japan. The video is partly an interview, partly a visual narrative of Kenna at work, and partly a collection of interesting scenes and images associated with some of his photographs. There is a lot to think about and consider in the video, and it struck several chords for me. Among many was his use of the word “hunt” to describe the act of looking for and finding photographic images, and not perhaps just in the sense of tracking and capturing an image, but also, I think, related to the need to be patient and to understand the “quarry.” I often have thought about the “hunt” aspect of looking for subject. (Link originally seen at George Barr’s Behind the Lens blog.)

The second video is rather different but also features a very talented landscape photographer, Charlie Cramer. Unlike the slow moving and rather poetic video of Kenna with its long silent shots and occasional sparse music, this video interview (on the Marc Silber show)  is pretty “straight ahead” – basically a record of Charlie talking about his ubiquitous framing guide, a sheet of mat board with a 4 x 5 cutout that he uses to help him visual photographs while he is in the field. This is interesting and Charlie makes a compelling case for using this “tool.” (I’ve thought about it, but never “gone there.” Perhaps I will now…) More interesting to me were a few side comments that Charlie makes in the course of the interview. For one, he refers to the frame as a “blood pressure meter,” and suggests that he more or less “just knows” when a scene is going to work because when he views it in the frame he feels his blood pressure rises. (In another context he has spoken of hearing the scene whisper, “Take me!”) The point, I think (and forgive me if I have this wrong, Charlie!) is that all of the rules of composition in the world won’t help you that much in the end – essentially you need to be able to look at the subject and “just know” that it will work and how.

Commentary, Photographers

Michael’s Frye’s First Post in the ‘Weekly Critique” Series

Leave a comment

I believe I noted earlier that Michael Frye has a new blog and was going to being a weekly photo critique, using a photograph selected from those offered by photographers who follow his blog. He has now posted the first critique in the series, using a wonderful photograph from Tim Parkin. (I was already following and enjoying Tim’s blog.) I won’t spoil the fun by sharing Michael’s critique here, but I’d like to offer a few comments:

Michael knows how to critique. In addition to know his photography – no surprise there – his commentary on Tim’s photograph could serve as a model for anyone who wants to offer effective criticism. (I won’t go into the details, but this is something I happen to know a bit about.) Michael describes what works in the photograph, primarily in the context of what he sees in it. The he shares observations about aspects that Tim might not have known about, offering some ideas about alternatives where appropriate.

In the course of the critique, Michael makes some (obvious to some, not so obvious to many others) points about the nature of landscape photograph. For example, there is a lot to think about in this paragraph:

Of course being in the right place at the right time is a big part of landscape photography. While luck is obviously a factor, luck favors effort, persistence, anticipation, and a willingness to fail. You have to drag your camera out when the chances of success are small. Most of the time you’ll be disappointed, but eventually you’ll get lucky. The ability to anticipate good light and weather conditions comes from experience, local knowledge, and a little intuition. Most photographers have more success making repeated trips to a local park, getting to know the place intimately, then traveling to some exotic, unfamiliar location.

Speaking for myself, it is always fascinating to see what other may see in your own work. I’ll readily admit that I’m incapable of regarding my own photographs in the same way that others do. (Occasionally, perhaps when going back to an image I haven’t looked at for a while,  I think I may get close.) For me the images are wrapped up in all sorts of context that other viewers cannot possibly have – the experience of the time and place in which the photograph was made, knowledge of other attempts to do the same image, perhaps a lot of time “working” the image in post. In this case, I can put myself in Tim’s shoes and imagine what he may have learned to see in his own photograph through this critique.

Good stuff, and I recommend that you follow the link and give it a read.

Commentary, Ideas, Photographers, Technique

Video: Michael Adams on “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico”

2 Comments

As if on cue, right after I posted my “Photographer versus Photoshopper” piece yesterday, in which I mentioned Adam’s “Moonrise…” photograph, I saw this wonderful video interview with Ansel Adams’ son Michael in which he offers a basic description of the extensive post-processing that Adams applied to the original negative to produce the print we know so well.

The interview also reminded me of another topic for the “Photographic Myths and Platitudes” series that I am thinking about, namely the claim that great photographers always carefully compose and consider their subjects before they trip the shutter. Sometimes they do, but quite often it is more a matter of “tripping” over the tripod as one scrambles to capture a moment of beauty that appeared unexpectedly and which may disappear any second if you don’t work quickly. Of course, well-developed technical and aesthetic instincts help when it comes to turning such a moment into a photograph.