Ansel Adams Portrait Session

[Drew Wiley]

(Got rug vacuumed)... I was quite involved with the Campus for a long time in terms of being a technical advisor for their architectural restoration projects, as well as working for the primary materials supplier. It was particularly interesting to get a photography commission in one of those very classic redwood buildings and its environs I was so involved with otherwise off an on over the years. In that case, the shoot and big event involved a Nobel Candidate and his family, and I was given total personal artistic liberty : people, architecture, landscaping, printing the shots too. Fun.

But that all came to the head the year I retired. I had gotten the purchase order from the restoration crew responsible for that same classic building, along with a number of others, and had all the special equipment and supplies ready to go. But some new department head decided to go "modern" and save a bunch of money by transferring purchasing tasks over to basically unpaid grad students instead. Well, being computer types, they would literally go to websites to order sacks of cement twenty five cents cheaper than we could supply them, but instead of just driving twelve blocks to pick them up, would pay forty bucks a sack extra shipping from an internet source. Typical lazy computer screen stupidity. But it was major restoration on a tight deadline highly reliant on my personal advice, which was impossible to meet if the geeks went behind their backs kept clumsily delayed everything. So there was a bit of rebellion, with the workman threatening to walk off unless the new regime got replaced with common sense. It happened, some big shot got fired, and life went on. And I retired. Whew!

The technical side was always fun however. The famous architect of those buildings was Juilia Morgan, some of whose structures I not only helped remodel myself in earlier days, but even lived in, in exchange for remodeling services. Amazing craftsmanship by some of the same workmen who built Hearst Castle.

[Michael R]

Hi Drew, I agree with you regarding Adams’s portrait photography. Some people say it’s bad but I think it is quite good. The one people often hate is the infamous Carolyn Anspacher picture but there’s a lot more to Adams’s portrait work than that. I never thought that was a bad portrait anyway.

[Drew Wiley]

Yeah, "The Great Stone Face" they laughed at then, and can't begin to afford a signed print of now! I personally think it's a masterpiece, and outright creatively daring too - who would have thought of tempting that kind of detail in a female complexion devoid of caked-on makeup with Karsh-style lighting, and it ending up making her look truly beautiful anyway, in its own non-stereotypical way. I wouldn't dare unless that person had naturally smooth skin to begin with. And having seen some Karsh before vs after retouching work prints, well.... Some of those glamorous gals weren't really quite like their movie stereotypes, that is, without either a lot of makeup for movies, or a lot of retouching of still studio shots.

I have used Karsh-like Arri projector fresnels and very high contrast lenses for my small amount of studio portraiture, but counterbalanced all that with "snatch printing", ending up with something almost looking like Pt/Pd in extremely subtle tonality. But I'm not aware of any current silver papers that do that decently today; they just go blaaah instead. Graded Brilliant Bromide did it wonderfully, especially in glycin developer.

[Mark Sawyer]

That would have been his assistant's fault. He can't reach the dark slide from where he is sitting. He can barely reach the shutter release.

I wish I could afford an assistant to blame things on...

[neil poulsen]

From a social media post by Kevin Murray:
"Ansel Adams with a Sinar Norma using the baggy bellows. This was taken in the early 1960s at one of the University of California campuses. He was doing a project for the university system for a book called Fiat Lux."



Someone needs to report this use of an extended center column to Drew!

You mean it even has one?

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

Other pictures of the same shooting session, dated Nov. 18, 1966, are available here
https://nara.getarchive.net/media/an...-morgue-05ceac

The photographer who photographed the photographer and his model was Dr. Donald Cooksey, a physicist.

https://nara.getarchive.net/media/id...grapher-fd4dbf

In the good old days, physicists worked in suit and tie, and took pictures of their colleagues with large format cameras!
It was so much better in the past

[Bernice Loui]

Another AA "portrait pix.



Bernice

[David Lindquist]

A few things:

1. Thank you for posting this Bernice.
2. Thank you Mark for identifying Dr. McMillan. I knew I had a source for that somewhere but you saved me looking.
3. Drew, Ansel is not a UC Berkeley alumnus. I was thinking he may have been awarded an honorary degree but can't immediately confirm that. Not sure he even got a high school diploma. I think it's fair to say that the education he got, largely from private tutors, left him more literate and numerate than some of today's college graduates.
4. His assistant there is the late Liliane de Cock.
5. I agree Emmanuel, (some) things were so much better in the past.

Finally I was at the Charter Day ceremonies at the Greek Theater in 1964 and saw Ansel Adams up at the top photographing the event. I have the book Fiat Lux and I [/I]think[I] I can pick myself out of the crowd in the photograph from that day published therein...

David

[Daniel Unkefer]

I like them boots he's a wearin'

[Merg Ross]

A few things:

1. Thank you for posting this Bernice.
2. Thank you Mark for identifying Dr. McMillan. I knew I had a source for that somewhere but you saved me looking.
3. Drew, Ansel is not a UC Berkeley alumnus. I was thinking he may have been awarded an honorary degree but can't immediately confirm that. Not sure he even got a high school diploma. I think it's fair to say that the education he got, largely from private tutors, left him more literate and numerate than some of today's college graduates.
4. His assistant there is the late Liliane de Cock.
5. I agree Emmanuel, (some) things were so much better in the past.

Finally I was at the Charter Day ceremonies at the Greek Theater in 1964 and saw Ansel Adams up at the top photographing the event. I have the book Fiat Lux and I [/I]think[I] I can pick myself out of the crowd in the photograph from that day published therein...

David

Correct, Ansel Adams is not a UC Berkeley alumnus. I photographed him receiving his Honorary Degree at the Charter Day Ceremony in 1961.