What Would Ansel Do?
Although he remained a traditionalist in his artistic vision, Ansel Adams was never one to eschew developing technology.
How then, I wonder, would he utilize today’s modern digital technologies?
Would he dump the zone system, with it’s tedious dodging and burning, for the high dynamic range techniques in photoshop?
Would he sell the enlarger on e-b@y for a high end printer?
What do you think?
I think he'd be hang gliding, far above your house--not wearing any pants.
I don't know if he would have dumped Zone system or not, but he probably would certainly have branched out into digital technologies, etc. Maybe he would have figured out how to adapt Zone system to digital image making and written a new volume to his book series.
The man appears to have been an image-maker not a film photographer, although that's what he had to work with so that's what he worked with.
Why don't you ask him... I'll loan you my Ouiji board.
I feel that AA was equally a image maker and a print maker. What in the heck is a film photographer? Someone who photographs film?
Burning and dodging have zero to do with the Zone System. B & D happens after one exposes and develops (using or not using the ZS) the film. And B & D is not "tedious" to most folks (well, not to me, anyway). To me that is like saying putting paint on a canvas is tedious, or that having to blow into a clarinet is tedious. But to each their own!
As an image and print maker, I think AA would have embraced digital capture and printing, once the hardware and software met his artistic standards.
He may have had to revise one of his quotes -- "There is nothing worse than a over-sharpened image of a fuzzy concept."
Didn't Adams, in his will/bequest, encourage the Creative Center for Photography to manipulate his negs using "modern" technology... or did I make that up?
I think he was actually looking forward to the development of digital photography. In one of his books he wrote something like "I believe the future belongs to electronic imaging, and I really hope I shall live to see it". It's not an exact quote, as I'm quoting from memory, but that was the idea.
What Vlad wrote. This topic has been discussed ad nauseum over the years. Google your question and you will find the discussions.Originally Posted by Vlad Soare
I think he said that verbally in his 1980 FilmAmerica biopic. He also mentioned that he hoped students at the Center for Creative Photography would be allowed to interpret his negatives (under proper supervision).
Rick "from his own lips" Denney
Iin the 1983 Playboy interview, AA talks about the future of photography.
Electronic photography, he called it. He said it will initially be useful in printmaking, then it will reach the point where photographs can be made electronically, and not on film.
Yes, this was discussed on an earlier thread, last year, I believe...
I think he'd have enough sense to turn the wooden cameras into btu's on a chilly evening, return to his piano, and never look back.
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