Ansel Adams remastered

[Heroique]

Most of us are well-aware of Ansel Adams’ enthusiasm about the newer “electronic” processes emerging in his later years:

"I eagerly await new concepts and processes,” he says. “I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them." (From his 1981 book, “The Negative”)

Had he lived longer, few of us doubt whether he would have explored his vision by digital means – and clearly not at the exclusion of film.

But this leaves me curious. :confused:

How might he have applied these “new concepts and processes” to his older work – not the potential work before him, but the “finished” work behind him. And not just through digital means, but also through newer traditional means that may also have begun appearing late in his career – modernized enlarging lenses, updated film & paper emulsions, new chemistry, etc.

Did Adams ever indicate – directly or indirectly – how he may have manipulated “old” negatives or re-done “finished” prints this way, in an effort to better achieve original aims, technical or artistic? Perhaps quoted evidence to make inferences?

[Donald Miller]

I met a photographer that studied under Adams back in the 1980's. He said that Ansel was aware of contrast masking of negatives and the benefits inherent in that practice but he considered it more involved than he wished to engage in.

Maybe he would be in the midst of PS if he had lived long enough.

[Drew Wiley]

This resembles another sheer speculation thread about AA posted a bit ago. But I look
at it this way, except for a brief stint under contract, he didn't get involved with color
photography, so in this respect was decidedly a traditionalist. After awhile your vision
and working practice get married and comfortable, and you get stuck in that groove.
Except for some early work, AA style was pretty much the same throughout his life -
cold-toned realistic prints from the darkroom. Zone system. No split toning, no warm tones, no color, no combined images. One accidental "black sun". And really, not much state of the art gear, unless you want to call a Zeiss lens from the era something like that. Who needs photoshop when you can just erase some hillside graffiti from a negative? I think the gadgety technophiles are telegraphing way too much of their own wishes into this hypothesis. Why not ask what digital camera Atget would have used?! (Let us be glad that his images - which are as sophisticated as any done now - were made with a virtually archaic process in his own lifetime!)

[David Karp]

Well, we don't have to speculate. He did reprint old negatives over and over. And the interpretations changed. As time went on he used newer materials, which also had an impact on the photograph.

John Sexton related an incident when Adams popped out of the darkroom with a print, and exulted that he finally came up with an interpretation of a print that he was happy with. It was a photo that he had taken many many years ago (I wish I remembered which one).

[Drew Wiley]

All I was implying was that there was a time when Adams was considered backwards because he wouldn't embrace color photography and stuck to what were
considered socially irrelevant themes. Today his fame has a lot to do with nostalgia
for the America past and how it looks in old-school black and white. And altough he
routinely improved his prints if the materials themselves proved better, the scope of
his style and methodology didn't veer very far off course at all. In contrast to Sarkowski, I feel he did his best work in his 60's, not his 40's, so he certainly wasn't
stuck in the mud. But I find it ironic how those who seek an answer to everything
through digitial options will probably just be looked upon as fuddy-duddies by the
next generation, who will have something far more advanced than the present
digital offerings. Good prints will still be good prints, even if the negative was made in a shoebox with a meniscus lens, or the print was made in a chicken house (like
Julia Cameron's were). People don't necessarily change just because the technology
becomes fancier. We adapt as needed, or if we are so inclined, take leaps of faith.
But only a market-manipulated idiot does it just because it's the latest thing. That's
materialism, not art. And certainly Adam's own gadgetry was not state of the art
even when he was alive. It did the trick, and was good enough. Other than that, he
fiddled with things a bit for curiosity or pay, but never seems to have adopted them
into his own stylistic parameters. Perhaps the only notable exception was Polaroid
film, but that made him a lot of money in the long haul.

[Bill_1856]

It's difficult to remember that at our present state, digital photography is still just in an early development stage. Lord knows what AA would have eventually been able to do with it.

[Heroique]

Thanks everyone for these comments which help satisfy my curiosity. Before posting, I did recognize that if a final image meets one’s aims, then new traditional or digital processes really don’t matter…

On the other hand, I was curious whether processes emerging late in Adams’ career may have given birth to new aims for older negatives or prints – or inspired him to give “another go” to older work if the processes available at the time of creation had frustrated original aims or personal satisfaction.

David Karp’s anecdote above (about John Sexton) suggests this may have happened a lot!

I confess I know less about Ansel Adams’ biography than many others here, and this is one dimension that often captivates me...

[rcjtapio]

I would like to comment on the line about AA being considered backwards because he didn't embrace color photography.

I was able to go to the Yosemite workshops in both 1977 & 1978. At one of those workshops, someone asked AA why he didn't shoot more in color. His answer was - that it was because "black & white was one more step removed from reality." Believe it or not, AA saw his photographs as abstractions. I think most people miss that point. (Yosemite doesn't really look like his photographs...just look at a color photograph of any location he shot & you can see how blah it looks. A color version just doesn't have the same magic. [my opinion])

I saw the AA "100 years" travelling exhibit at the Art Institute in Chicago & remember how disappointed I was in a lot of his early images, but then realized, these were prints made on inferior products compared to today. (It amazes me that as the world goes digital, the B&W materials keep getting better...note the improvements Kodak made in Tri-X & T-Max films in the last few years. Too bad they didn't commit the same energy to their silver papers.) He did indeed print many of his negatives again in later years with the much improved materials. I think there is no doubt he would have used any material available to him to get what he wanted, once visualized by him in his head.

Rick Tapio

[Drew Wiley]

A lot of people seem to forget that Adams made his living as a commercial photographer, not an art photographer. Despite his early fame in art circles, this
wasn't a particularly lucrative source of income until he was fairly old. He did make
quite a bit because early-on Polaroid paid him in stocks which quickly rose in value.
But he wasn't personally rich. The gift shop in Yosemite also had income, but his
prints themselves didn't fetch much. His working era was when black and white was
still commercially significant. Like most of us, if he were alive today he probably
would own a Mac and Photoshop software, just like most of us. But how much of that
would drift into his art per se if another question altogether. Maybe he would have
hired an assistant skilled in such things, maybe have ignored them completely.
Late in his life there were wonderful papers around like Seagull, Galerie, Brilliant, and Portriga which are all now gone or changed. He used a couple of these. Other fine papers have come along. But to call the newer ones "better" might raise a lot of eyebrows from some of the old-timers. Certainly VC papers have vastly improved.
But if Adams had decades of evolving darkroom skill, and apparently enjoyed darkroom work, and was working with a lot of old negatives anyway, why would he
switch to a whole new technology just for the hell of it?

[Drew Wiley]

Not to beat this humorous topic to death - but as I was out on my walk I thought of
all the revolutions in photography which AA largely ignored. Today things like inkjet
are the newest craze and generate a lot of buzz. But over Adams lifetime there were
all kinds of things in both still and moving images which, from a functional standpoint, were just as revolutionary as anything going on now. Some like Kodachrome and dye transfer had nearly a 75 year history, so were certainly formidable. Adams talked about all kinds of things, including how to apply the zone system to color exposures (I don't know anyone who does this- somebody might), and the coming electronic age of image-making, but he ended his career exactly the way he began it in his youth - expose the paper, dip it in the developer, stop, fixer, wash it, dry it. There were of course a number of minor tweaks to this over the long haul, but all the big revolutionary developments during that same long career never entered his own practice. Other than the slight detour into Polaroid, he was
amazingly static, especially if you compare him to someone like Steichen. Even his
black and white technique was predictable. It worked for him, so why change?

[paradoxbox]

Don't forget that he mentioned he thought some of his photographs would look better in color..

I think everyone can agree he wanted the best images possible in his mind, and whatever process it would take to achieve, he'd try it out. No limitations.

[rdenney]

Everyone really should find a copy of the FilmAmerica biography of him made in 1980. It really allowed him to express his ideals in his own words, and photographers in particular would gain much from it. There is no need to speculate on some of these issues--he spoke about them in that show in ways he did not write about. I think only those who conversed with him in workshops or privately would be able to better the insight one might gain.

A couple of points come to mind from that show and other sources:

1. He indeed did intend his negatives to be reinterpreted as time went on. He specifically said so, even to the extent of allowing students, under careful supervision to make prints from his negatives. He definitely intended them to use emerging technologies in those interpretations. Over and over, he described the negative as a score and a print as the performance of that score, and clearly he said that in the context that the performer was not necessarily the composer.

2. If you look at his equipment, he was not a traditionalist. He used what worked--sometimes it was old but often it was new. There is a picture of him making a portrait in the work he did for the University of California in the 1965 and 1966 (which was republished a few years ago as "Fiat Lux"). He was using a Sinar Norma 5x7 monorail view camera. That was a current model in the 60's. In that same assignment, he used a Hasselblad 500c (or something like that) with chrome-barrel lenses--that was still very much a current model, and he was quite proud of it. (There is one scene in the film where he lists a few things in their proper places in his work room, and the Hasselblad kit was the last one he mentioned. After reciting that list, he looked at the camera with a clearly please and self-satisfied expression, and said "All is right with the world." There is no doubt that he liked the toys as much as we do.) One lens he pictures in his book The Camera was a 121mm/8 Super Angulon in a funky Compur 2. Those lenses were made in the 50's, which means that lens was maybe 15 years old when he revised those books. I've already had my copy of the same lens longer than he had his.

3. He described black-and-white photography as being "not obviously unrealistic" even when it is heavily manipulated, while color loses its realism with only a little manipulation. For that reason, he preferred black and white as a form of expression, not because of any sense of traditionalism.

4. He was always a strong proponent of straight photography. He toned in selenium but I don't see that many techniques, and I'll include split toning as a probably incorrect example, fit with his aesthetic. He also claimed that his later prints were darker and more intense than his earlier prints, and there's a good chance that was a response to materials that were available.

5. Yes, he used an ancient 8x10 horizontal enlarger, but several times he upgraded the lighting system to a modern technology that gave him greater control.

In short, I don't think one could at all assume that Adams had Luddite tendencies that would have eschewed digital techniques. He might well have eschewed a lot of digital work, but that is a different thing.

On the question of his aesthetic, I do not understand the notion of his images appealing to people out of nostalgia. Many who look at his pictures have never been to the places he photographed, and thus the pictures are unlikely to recall fond memories. They are simply beautiful images of beautiful places. Showing the natural scene in all its beauty was something he did talk about. I don't see how that motivation becomes stale. It doesn't have to describe the boundaries of art, of course, but I would hate to think there is ever a time when the boundaries of art would exclude that aesthetic. His photos wanted to be where he made the picture, not long for another time. Maybe long for another condition, but again that is a different thing.

And just because old photographers use techniques they have mastered doesn't mean they are opposed to new techniques. It just means they don't want to start all over. I sometimes think we over-value innovation in art, and forget that art can have a simple purpose of bringing beauty to our lives in addition to its other purposes.

In my tuba-playing circles, we have these same conversations. There are two real icons of American tuba playing in the 20th century: William Bell and Arnold Jacobs. Most modern tuba players, and I don't limit this to America, can trace some portion of their training to pedagogy developed by one of these two artists. Bell played in the Sousa band, ending up in New York playing in the NBC Symphony (under Toscanini). Jacobs was the renowned tuba player in the Chicago Symphony for 44 years, including the period when that ensemble established a whole new standard for brass playing in orchestras.

Many times, young tuba players ask whether Jacobs could have won an audition today. They are usually complaining that every orchestra job has 300 applicants, of which 100 are qualified, 50 would do an excellent job, and 10 would be world-class. They are reacting to the apparent arbitrariness of whatever choice is made. And we react the same way to Adams, who became extremely famous for direct and beautiful pictures of mountains and skies that we now think are cliche. We make pictures of mountains and skies, and we don't become famous because those who hold the keys to such fame (assuming anyone does) abhor whatever they perceive to be cliche, so we think that success is arbitrary. It may or may not be, but it doesn't diminish what Adams did with the tools he had available, and it does not pass judgment on how forward-thinking he might have been.

Rick "who would love to see some famous Adams images in new forms, with the photographer and printer given separate but equal billing" Denney

[Drew Wiley]

Rick - Your comment reminds me of one of my favorite Far Side cartoons, where an
orchestra conductor was being issued by the Devil into his room in hell, where there
are a bunch of high school kids playing instruments, including a tuba. I wonder what
Adams would have really thought is some digital types got ahold of his images today
and just went free-fall. His own printings may have improved over the years, but
the reproductions in books (which would certainly involve digital workflow today),
and well as the prints made from his negatives for sale by his students didn't drift
very far off-course. And just because he talked about things or even complemented
them in other peoples work doesn't mean he had any intention of adopting them
for his own visualization. At the moment eveyone thinks there a giant visual revolution going on just because we have digital. All kinds of giant revolutions went
on in both art and photography during Adams lifetime and he pretty much stuck to
the same theme. In a way I admire him for it. He had his priorities intact. But why
so much fuss about him anyway, other than the fun of speculating about it? Why not
ask why Brett Weston burned his negatives, which gives him an A+ in my book.

[Heroique]

[...] At one of those workshops, someone asked AA why he didn't shoot more in color. His answer was - that it was because "black & white was one more step removed from reality." [...]


[...] He described black-and-white photography as being "not obviously unrealistic" even when it is heavily manipulated, while color loses its realism with only a little manipulation. For that reason, he preferred black and white as a form of expression. [...]

Thank you Rick for such a thoughtful and thought-provoking reply. More than any other post in this forum, it has helped me better align my perception of AA and his work with the evidence of his own words. It can be a difficult task! Often I come across statements – like those above – that seem flat contradictions, but may also be entirely consistent if read with a different interpretation. His words alone can provide a healthy dose of misunderstanding (as his images almost never do for me).

I also find AA’s comparison (negative = score, print = performance) a very telling one – as I do his generous acknowledgment of interpretations by others in his statement that “performer” isn’t necessarily the “composer.” (Makes one curious where the conductor fits in, by the way. :p ) Yet, I wonder how wide this latitude really was, since, as you say, he was willing to allow students to make prints from his negatives “under close supervision.” Did he allow a wider latitude for others?


They are simply beautiful images of beautiful places.

Even with my interest in AA’s own words and the competing interpretations they make possible, your statement above is where I’m always led in the end. Many of AA’s images strike my eyes with the ravishing spectacle of nature with a force nearly equal to my direct and immediate experience of it. What more need I ask from a photograph, I often ask myself.

[Drew Wiley]

Heroique - Adams was trained as a classical musician. When he referred to score and performance it implied something very nuanced. I don't think he had in mind
Mozart being performed by Guns n' Roses! I never saw an actual Adams print until I
was in my mid-30's, after I was already displaying my own work. But I did grow up
in the Sierras and instantly recognized just how much effort Adams took attempting
to capture the essence of Sierra light itself. The tactical problem arises when you are simultaneously attempting to increase the drama or textural contrast of the
scene. That's where the "unrealism" of the red-filter skies and plus development of
the negative come in handy. Sometimes the actual light was much flatter than what
he envisioned for the print and so forth. If you overdo that in color with a polarizer,
for example, it simply looks fake. Adams was a master illusionist - but what in fact
he was portraying was the essence of the light actually in front of him. It wasn't fake in this sense at all. And this is why some ill-informed comments annoy me.
Just because there was a TV documentary in which some studio hack took one of
Adams negatives and made an idiot-looking false-color presentation of it for mere
effect does not mean he did or ever would do something like that. In fact, in the next major documentary of him, John Sarkowski outright states that Adams creative
era ended in the 1940's, and that thereafter, his importance was as a teacher and
environmentalist. While I think that particular statement went overboard, it does
illustrate the fact that once he developed the Zone System and his signature cold-toned silver image style, and an elementary mode of dodging and burning, he really
stayed within the same groove the rest of his life. Why would he do otherwise. His
gift was the ability to control the nuances of his specific chosen medium quite well.
The mistake of so many neophyte digital printers is not to work within limitation;
they simply go ape because there are so many new toy options. I could care less
how someone actually prints, and one method is inherently no better than another.
But a great printmaker will learn restraint. The farthest Adams ever got from his
center was to make slightly softer mural prints, simply because the detail of his early negatives didn't hold up all that well under significant enlargement.

[rdenney]

At the moment eveyone thinks there a giant visual revolution going on just because we have digital.

The revolution one endures always looms large in their thinking compared to the one they read about (if they read).

I didn't say that I thought Adams would embrace digital himself or that he would let students print from his negatives while he was alive. But he did place his negatives in a place where students would have access to it, and that was the context of that statement he made in the film.

I completely agree that if it was to be represented as his work, then it should closely follow his aesthetic. Much music gets "interpreted" differently from what is written in the score, and I think when the composer writes instructions, they should be followed. They define the boundaries within which interpretation resides, unless its departure is disclosed as such. But that opinion is certainly not universal among musicians.

Rick "who has that Far Side cartoon stuck to his refrigerator" Denney

[Drew Wiley]

Heroique - regarding Adams loaning negatives to his students ... he was quite open
minded and complementary about other people's styles. But the proof is in the pudding. When he had his images reproduced in books and postcards etc they better
damn well come as close as possible to his darkroom prints (he even modified prints
specifically for offset reproduction, so they'd come out like his mounted prints). And
when student-done prints ended up in the Yosemite gift shop - they certainly matched his own interpretation of the score and not theirs! Yes, he selenium enhanced the Moonrise negative and so forth, but again, these are nuances. You have to take his own published statements about photography in general like you
would a political commentator or something. It doesn't mean that it's they way the
individual himself actually does things. Adams was married to his Zone-system
technique and specific darkroom technique. And even in the realm of simple silver
gelatin printing there are all kinds of options and creative tools he apparently never
seriously explored. From a technical standpoint, there are probably any number of
us who can make better prints today. But Adams could certainly combine an illusion
of realism with finely-nuanced visual poetry. But make no mistake about it, it was
a romanticized impression of realism he was after.

[Drew Wiley]

Rick - I must confess that I like Guns n' Roses better than Mozart, so all my sarcasm
is just for analogy. Unfortunately, when I came on the scene Adams was already old
and sick. I did share one major retrospective with him, and it was the largest set
of his mural prints ever assembled. Because the negatives were basically fuzzy at
that degree of enlargement, he wisely emphasized the poetic mood rather than the
drama of various classic images, and they had a completely different feel than what
we stereotypically regard as his work, even though the basic darkroom technique
was analogous. What I miss in many of his wannabee clones is that poetic sensitivity, which does indeed remind one of a finely-crafted and nuanced musical
score.

[Robert Hughes]

the proof is in the pudding. When he had his images reproduced in books and postcards etc they better damn well come as close as possible to his darkroom prints (he even modified prints specifically for offset reproduction, so they'd come out like his mounted prints).
Interesting comment. I have a library copy of "The Camera" at home - on the cover is a picture of a full moon rising over Half Dome; inside the book there is another example of it. The two prints are significantly different, not just in format (the cover is vertically rectangular, the inside shot is square) but also in contrast and intensity. The shadow detail, clearly visible in the cover shot, has gone to black inside. Even AA's own books aren't free from variation.

[Drew Wiley]

Robert - I don't think any publisher of that era was going to spend a premium to make
the dust cover to a "how to" book look precisely the way it was meant to. Nor would
any nowadays either. Let's leave room for a little common sense here.

[Brian Ellis]

. . . Why not
ask why Brett Weston burned his negatives, which gives him an A+ in my book.

Just as an aside, Brett Weston didn't burn all his negatives so maybe he should just get a B+. : - ) We don't need to ask why he burned the ones he did, I think he told us why he did it. Meg can correct me but it's my understanding he said he burned them because he didn't want other people reprinting and reinterpreting them after he was gone.

You also said that "even in the realm of simple silver
gelatin printing there are all kinds of options and creative tools he apparently never
seriously explored." I'm trying to think of what these might be and I can't think of any (even assuming we know what he explored and what he didn't). What do you have in mind?

[Drew Wiley]

Brian - of course I have no tally of what things AA might have incidentally experimented with or even selectively used for his commercial work. But in terms of his
fine art printing, what he taught, random conversations with his assistants and some
mutual friends, and just looking at a lot of prints, it is possible to form an estimate of
what he was comfortable with and wasn't. I personally found it ironic that he was
surrounded by friends, colleages, and neighbors who were quite proficient at masking,
yet this is one very useful avenue he doesn't even seem to mention. John Sexton dabbled with it; but Howard Bond seems to have been the one to popularize it with
b&w printers. Plain old neocreocin red was a bread-and-butter control tool of many
contemporaneous photographers, and AA didn't empasize that either; maybe it
conflicted with his esthetic, like photoshop does today to certain purists (just guessing), though he must have been tempted to use from time to time. By contrast
he promoted flashing, which is a rather primitive control compared to masking.
Perhaps he didn't want to deal with more spotting, but assistants were around for
that sort of thing. The fact is, we all have certain preferences and methodology and
become proficient in some more than others.

[Brian Ellis]

Brian - of course I have no tally of what things AA might have incidentally experimented with or even selectively used for his commercial work. But in terms of his
fine art printing, what he taught, random conversations with his assistants and some
mutual friends, and just looking at a lot of prints, it is possible to form an estimate of
what he was comfortable with and wasn't. I personally found it ironic that he was
surrounded by friends, colleages, and neighbors who were quite proficient at masking,
yet this is one very useful avenue he doesn't even seem to mention. John Sexton dabbled with it; but Howard Bond seems to have been the one to popularize it with
b&w printers. Plain old neocreocin red was a bread-and-butter control tool of many
contemporaneous photographers, and AA didn't empasize that either; maybe it
conflicted with his esthetic, like photoshop does today to certain purists (just guessing), though he must have been tempted to use from time to time. By contrast
he promoted flashing, which is a rather primitive control compared to masking.
Perhaps he didn't want to deal with more spotting, but assistants were around for
that sort of thing. The fact is, we all have certain preferences and methodology and
become proficient in some more than others.

Thanks Drew. So you're saying that Adams ignored or didn't seriously pursue masking and something called "neocreocin red" that I've never heard of and that didn't come up when I Googled it. Not to argue or be critical but that's quite a bit different than the "all kinds of options and creative tools" you originally said that Adams ignored.

As an aside, John Sexton uses and teaches a much simpler method of unsharp masking than Howard Bond's far more complex method. I have no idea whether he learned that from his time with Adams or developed it on his own. I'm not aware that he uses any other kind of masking. .

[Drew Wiley]

Brian - I was merely giving examples. If you get ahold of a Kodak graphics arts guide
from the era or know anything about what Adams' color-printing neighbors were up to
you can understand just how simple his own techniques were by comparison. Bond's
and Sexton's masking techniques are also very, very elementary. Maybe there was a
disjunct between what Adams considered b&w printing and what was routine in
photolithography and color printing at the time. Maybe he just didn't bother. Maybe he
tried and got frustrated because his equipment wasn't up to par. Adams gave up on
pyro too, even though many people used it. He liked predictability. People think that he
was a master of technique - and within his own parameters he was - but compared to
many color printers of the era his skill set and equipment was quite limited. Can't find
neocreosin red?!!!!!! That was Photoshop for 75 years, and still works better for
certain b&w negative corrections/manipulations. Ever see clouds dubbed into a dense
sky or cigarette smoke added to a period portrait? Need to reduce density repeatedly
in a very controlled and predictable manner in just part of a negative? A ten dollar
bottle of neocreosin will last twenty years. How much does a Mac and Photoshop
cost?

[Merg Ross]

[QUOTE=Brian Ellis;507756]Just as an aside, Brett Weston didn't burn all his negatives so maybe he should just get a B+. : - ) We don't need to ask why he burned the ones he did, I think he told us why he did it. Meg can correct me but it's my understanding he said he burned them because he didn't want other people reprinting and reinterpreting them after he was gone.

Brian, that is precisely Brett's reason for destroying most (not all) of his negatives. The well publicized burning of a few negatives took place at his home on the morning of his 80th birthday.

Shortly after he had printed over 800 of his father's negatives, (the 1954 Print Project), Brett concluded that only he could make a Brett Weston print.

[Merg Ross]

Brian - I was merely giving examples. If you get ahold of a Kodak graphics arts guide
from the era or know anything about what Adams' color-printing neighbors were up to
you can understand just how simple his own techniques were by comparison. Bond's
and Sexton's masking techniques are also very, very elementary. Maybe there was a
disjunct between what Adams considered b&w printing and what was routine in
photolithography and color printing at the time. Maybe he just didn't bother. Maybe he
tried and got frustrated because his equipment wasn't up to par. Adams gave up on
pyro too, even though many people used it. He liked predictability. People think that he
was a master of technique - and within his own parameters he was - but compared to
many color printers of the era his skill set and equipment was quite limited. Can't find
neocreosin red?!!!!!! That was Photoshop for 75 years, and still works better for
certain b&w negative corrections/manipulations. Ever see clouds dubbed into a dense
sky or cigarette smoke added to a period portrait? Need to reduce density repeatedly
in a very controlled and predictable manner in just part of a negative? A ten dollar
bottle of neocreosin will last twenty years. How much does a Mac and Photoshop
cost?

Hi Drew, I believe that you are referring to crocein dye, is that correct? I used to use a powder, scarlet dye made by Kodak for working on negatives.

[Drew Wiley]

Yes Merg, Kodak might have labeled it "Creocin". Here's a product that's ridiculously
fast and easy to use and costs next to nothing, is easily controlled or removed. You
don't need a two-hundred page owner's manual; in fact, you can learn to use it in
about two minutes, and the only extra ingredient you need is tap water. Which means it's not "cool". Steve Jobs won't be making any announcements about it. If
every remaining bottle in the world sold, the value of Adobe or Apple stock wouldn't
go up a millionth of a percent. No one will pay attention if one pontificates about it
on these web forums. No one will go around bragging how much they spent on it.
Totally doomed. The next thing we need to banish from our photographic vocabulary
is Farmer's Reducer.

[Drew Wiley]

Just checked a bottle in the lab. It's labeled Kodak Crocein Scarlet. This is a sizable
class of dyes industrially. I always thought it belonged to the eosin class, hence the
name neocreosin, which appears in much of the older literature. But several related
dyes might have been used over the years. The MSDS might or might not be more
specific.

[Brian Ellis]

[QUOTE=Brian Ellis;507756]Just as an aside, Brett Weston didn't burn all his negatives so maybe he should just get a B+. : - ) We don't need to ask why he burned the ones he did, I think he told us why he did it. Meg can correct me but it's my understanding he said he burned them because he didn't want other people reprinting and reinterpreting them after he was gone.

Brian, that is precisely Brett's reason for destroying most (not all) of his negatives. The well publicized burning of a few negatives took place at his home on the morning of his 80th birthday.

Shortly after he had printed over 800 of his father's negatives, (the 1954 Print Project), Brett concluded that only he could make a Brett Weston print.

Thanks Merg. My apologies for not catching the typo in my spelling of your name in my original post.