Have you seen any of his work on display at The Ansel Adams Gallery? He has had some work on the walls there from time to time when I have been there and it is wonderful. Will have to check out the book.
Hey Paul, nature is grand! I think many people will always enjoy this type of photograph, especially when done well like these prints appear to be. I agree however, that it certainly isn't a "fresh" approach. I was doing this type of image in the 1970's and it was already "old." Now as I return to the landscape, I strive for something different. Unlike current trends though, I still like strong graphic compositions, but I try to stay away from predictable themes (not always!). I also get bored pretty fast with blah photos that need explanations like: concrete in the modern landscape, etc. It seems like a lot of folks who shoot large format are in the modern/romantic camp simply because they enjoy that type of photograph. Not everybody is trying to be cutting edge. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle, if that makes any sense.
Hi Steve, I wholeheartedly agree that nature is grand ... I can't get enough of it. and I'm not faulting the photographer for agrandizing the grand, just questioning the idea that the work is an especially original treatment of a familiar subject. I think it's a quite familiar treatment of a familiar subject.
Nothing wrong with doing that, unless you're convinced you're doing something that you're not.
By the way, "ain't nature grand" is a phrase Weston teased Ansel with. "What are you doing today, Ansel, some more of that 'ain't nature grand' stuff? Ansel would supposedly say, "yup!"
Well paul, I am in total agreement with you there: "a quite familiar treatment of a familiar subject."
Does this mean that an increasingly "unfamiliar treatment" of a familiar subject will get the same audience? Probably not. The more "unfamiliar" you get, the more you attract an entirely different audience. Each audience is looking for different things. just playing with the idea you brought up.
yeah, one way to look at is that everyone's looking for a different mix of comfort and challenge. on top of that, people will differ in what they find comforting and what they find challenging, depending on what they're used to looking at.
it's been pointed out that music is succesful when it sets up comforting expectations (through repetition and through familar patterns) and then violates those expectations in surprising and illuminating ways.
but of course, everyone comes to the music from a different background. one person's illuminating surprise is another person's confused noise, and another person's predictable cliche. so the standard is always entirely personal.
Yup, I guess we're in agreement here. I was also thinking about the music analogy. My daughter enjoys "underground Hip Hop" and when I listen to it I have no idea what its all about, although I can enjoy Cool jazz, Be Bop and Hendrix or even Green Day and Linkin Park just fine. The "surprise element" for me in music is the thing that makes it most exciting, especially those spontaneous creative moments during solos, and its the same with photography. But you are right, that ground of familiarity has to be there first, and that varies a lot from person to person. Classical music is certainly main stream and "very old school," but it has a huge audience.
Bob Kolbrener is familiar turf for a large audience, but he may not be "spontaneous" or edgy enough to satisfy a person looking for a stronger or different kind of stimulation, like yourself.
I admit that I haven't seen every photo taken by Ansel Adams, but Kolbrenners I find quite different, There is a playful element in them that I think seperate most of his work from the oh so sober stuff of many followers of the genre of B&W landscapes.
I think what I like best about Kolbrenner (and Loranc too) is a feeling of "atmosphere" that the photos transmit. Its unique and very few b&w lanscape photos I've seen are successful at doing this.
Theres more than one way to take a photograph, and a photo's statement is either that of the photographer or maybe the subject. I find that b&w landscapes that let the subject make the statement more interesting. There is a difference between
1) a picture of a tree
2) a picture of a tree conveying the tog's socio/political/enviremental concerns, and
3)a picture of a tree that enables a viewer to smell the pinon, experience the wind blowing over a ridge and feel the pine cones crunch underfoot.
IMHO, Kolbrenner and very few others can pull of a "3"
Actually, I find very few who can succesfully do 1) a picture of a tree without falling into some version of 2 or 3 (usually but not always verging on cliche and/or nostalgia)
Atget and Friedlander maybe?
but a picture of a tree that is just a tree, but that is also everything that is a tree - that is rare
(and was it you who pointed me to my quote below in an older thread...?)
You'd be amazed how small the demand is for pictures of trees... - Fred Astaire to Audrey Hepburn
If you want to see other Yosemite images that will make you smile, check out Ray McSavaney's "walking tree" images, some of which are included in his book "Explorations" (which for its combination of images and text is on my list of all-time best photography books).
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