Quote Originally Posted by Heroique View Post
This got me thinking...

“I consider this [Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1927] to be my first visualization,” AA says in his book The Negative, “seeing in my mind the image I wanted before making the exposure.” (i.e., using a red filter to express his visualization, since a yellow one wouldn’t do.)

A threshold to be sure...

But does one’s 1st visualization = the threshold of “Mastery”?
Knowledge has nothing to do with mastery. I read a crap-load of photographic information very early on and would have known without ever taking a single photo the basic difference between the effects of differing filters on various types of films... mostly panchromatic. Hell, Adams could have achieved a similar affect at Half Dome by simply switching to ortho film with no filter... or minimal filtering.

Even back when I shot quite a bit I was never better than "pretty good". Well, better than anyone I'd personaly met but that wasn't saying much at the time. I would love to be called a "master" but that opportunity was lost a very long time ago. Now I just want to have a little fun and take some not-so-crappy photos.