Transitions: Another of Ansel's iconic trees succumbs to age

[Vaughn]

Actually, copying another artist's work is a traditional learning method. And what is learned helps us to create our own images. Of course, displaying and selling work that are purposeful copies of someone elses work is a bit tacky.

But I have worked enough in Yosemite Valley that I have unintentionally duplicated an others image, and I have purposefully set up the camera knowing the scene has been done before. But each time I have studied the light and have let the light in -- and have made the image my own.

Vaughn

Edited to add...I don't know what is worse, to make the same image again or to say the same thing again -- without realizing it til afterwards! LOL! And I think I said it better the first time (post #21 of this topic!) I was checking to see if I had already talked about the Big leaf maples I have come to know along Prairie Creek...and I found that I have.

[Keith S. Walklet]

There is some benefit for those starting out to attempt to recreate the works that precede them, if only to understand the creative decisions that the artist made when the captured the original. All good as a foundation to create their own masterpieces.

Nicholas, I believe the autumn image of the tree was made at the same time as the color version which that appears on the back cover of the book of AA's color work.

On a side note, when in the Escalante this spring, I saw that another well-known tree near Jacob Hamblin Arch (featured on the cover of Rudi's guidebook) is now supine. I seem to recollect hearing that it fell a couple years ago. The growth around the fallen trunk looked as if it had been at least a year.

[Stephen Willard]

Actually, copying another artist's work is a traditional learning method. And what is learned helps us to create our own images. Of course, displaying and selling work that are purposeful copies of someone elses work is a bit tacky.

But I have worked enough in Yosemite Valley that I have unintentionally duplicated an others image, and I have purposefully set up the camera knowing the scene has been done before. But each time I have studied the light and have let the light in -- and have made the image my own.

I beg to differ. I believe it is good to study great works of photography, try to articulate why they are great works, and then go find your own oak tree. Leave AA oak tree to the fate of time. To replicate with an image of the original photograph in hand, teaches you nothing. The act of replicating someone's work is like a parrot who can precisely mimic the words but has no understanding of what the words actually mean. Thus, the parrot is not be able to use the words in other ways because he lacks understanding. This is also true for those photographers who become chronic replicators of other people's work. They are unable to move beyond the work they are replicating. I cannot tell you how many times I had customers tell me most western landscape photography all looks the same because they all go to the same places to photograph the same stuff over and over again.

Alternatively, to deconstruct a great photograph and understand its compositional arrangements and how the light and atmospheric conditions all play together in compelling ways allows the apprentice to gain a deep understanding of his craft and art. This process requires the apprentice to read books about composition and color theory, develop productive field methods and strategies, and develop an intuitive understanding of how to formulate an expressive vision. This exercise of analyzing other’s work without actually replicating the work itself provides him with the generalizations he needs to apply that understanding in new and refreshing ways that gives him a distinctive voice of his own as opposed to simply replicating the image like a parrot.

[Nicholas F. Jones]

Thanks, Keith, for your observation. When in a couple of weeks my used copy (with dust jacket!) of AA in Color arrives, I'll compare the color image with the b&w one in the 1948 book.

Nicholas

[Nicholas F. Jones]

1.Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada (1948), pl. 10 “Late autumn evening, Merced Canyon west of Ribbon Creek, below Yosemite Valley.” Under Photographic Data, p. 121: 8x10 Ansco Commercial View camera, 12 1/4” Cooke Series XV lens. No filter. Isopan developed in Kodak D-23. AA further notes “weak illumination,” reciprocity “departure,” exposure 4 min. @ f/45, less than normal exposure and prolonged development.

2.Ansel Adams in Color (1993), pp. 106-107 and back of jacket: “Autumn Forest, Twilight, Yosemite National Park, California, c. 1950.” Under List of Plates, p. 131, film is identified as 5x7 Kodachrome.

The 8x 10 Isopan and the 5x7 Kodachrome do appear to have been shot on the same occasion. I can’t find even the slightest variation in the deciduous vegetation where a difference of a season or year would be easily detectable. Besides the identical camera placement, the interpretation of the subject is the same: nearly silhouetted massive tree trunk against brightly lit background. Another example of AA working with both b&w and color (but with the same camera, a 4x5) on the same occasion is “ Sand Dunes, Sunrise / Death Valley National Monument, California”, 1948, i.e. at about this same time (Examples, pp. 56-59; AA in Color, pp. 119-120).

3.Examples, pp. 52-55: “Early Morning, Merced River, Autumn / Yosemite National Park, c. 1950.” Kodak 8x10 view with 10 inch WF Ektar. Again, the vegetation seems to indicate a significantly later occasion than the two other images; and the interpretation, brightly lit subject against shadowed background, is the very reverse.