Yes, thanks for the links.
Yes, thanks for the links.
Principal Unix System Engineer, Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems
Me too.
It's just a hunch, but my guess is that eventually, after years of experience, some of us end up selecting only those subjects which match the capacity of our materials and process. Just as we learn to spot the lighting, texture, composition and other elements which will result in a nice print with little effort, we do the same with respect to dynamic range. In other words, it worked for him.
And thanks for the link..its a hoot reading the old newsletters...did the workshop with him in 1979
BEST WORKSHOP EVER
I think Pickers summary of the zone system was a simplistic solution for simpletons like me who hasn’t seen the advantage of using a more complex zone system.
Bruce Barlow
author of "Finely Focused" and "Exercises in Photographic Composition"
www.brucewbarlow.com
I'd like to tack on a few thoughts, having downloaded the set of newsletters and read through perhaps twenty. I'll note first, that I a just finding my way back to serious work after many years and am "filling up" on great B&W photographers' work and thoughts. I had just finished reading the book of A. Adams's correspondence when this came along.
Though the newsletters speak most directly in many places to the large format B&W artist, I would recommend them without reserve to one and all. The newsletters began in 1973 and naturally contain a number of concerns, as well as specific references to materials and equipment no longer available. But what they offer as well
is a wealth of ideas, approaches, and wisdom on all facets of our art. Picker was unfailingly blunt about "what works and what doesn't work," what materials were up to snuff and which not (RC papers were new then), and so forth. His message, however, was that serious photography is hard work, and hard enough without introducing more variables than necessary; that learning to see is the hard part, not the technical. One need not agree with every particular to learn, or be reminded, that the goal is the final result -- in his case, as in that of many of forum members, the fine print.
Picker knew some of the most famous photographers of his time well, such as Adams, Strand, and Caponigro, and shares correspondence and other presentation of insights from them as well as his own and his experiences in the many workshops he gave.
The newsletters are a source of inspiration, a guide to technique and how to think about it, and a trove of gems of all kinds. For me, enough to also order copies of the Zone VI Workshop and The Fine Print (both very inexpensive used, at the big retailers now). Notably, Picker makes a point in one newsletter about being horrified that the first had helped to spawn a Zone System "cult." The Fine Print, he said, was a much better book, but the first far outsold it.
Philip Ulanowsky
Sine scientia ars nihil est. (Without science/knowledge, art is nothing.)
www.imagesinsilver.art
https://www.flickr.com/photos/156933346@N07/
That's where I made my first real negative and print..it turned out to be so simple but plainly hidden from view!
All the instructors shared all they knew ..a first for me As most educators want to convince you in someway that it will take years of hard work to reach their level..which of course is total nonsense
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