From a social media post by Kevin Murray:
"Ansel Adams with a Sinar Norma using the baggy bellows. This was taken in the early 1960s at one of the University of California campuses. He was doing a project for the university system for a book called Fiat Lux."
Someone needs to report this use of an extended center column to Drew!
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
Haha. I think there are multiple violations of Drew’s Laws in this picture.But he would probably just say many of Adams’s photographs are downright unsharp up close. Fuzzier than an upside down Ibex in a lightning storm with Vaseline on the lens.
Originally Posted by Peter De Smidt
From a social media post by Kevin Murray:
"Ansel Adams with a Sinar Norma using the baggy bellows. This was taken in the early 1960s at one of the University of California campuses. He was doing a project for the university system for a book called Fiat Lux."
Someone needs to report this use of an extended center column to Drew!
Looks like a Schneider 121/8 Super-Angulon. Kind of a wide lens- I wonder what the final image looked like.
And you might think that he'd have used a longer cable release.
(When I was a studio portraitist I used a long release held behind my back, so the sitter could not see the releases being triggered. Standard practice at that studio)
But a fascinating image nonetheless!
I searched but couldn't find it, though there were a number of images of Adams making the portrait. Just none of the actual portrait.
Perhaps he forgot to pull the dark slide...
"I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."
That was a fairly famous commission in its time. A picture book came out, and the project is still fondly remembered in campus history, especially his shot of the clock tower. That structure is once again the center of conversation, because someone recently sent a drone hovering around it, and the resident peregrine falcons attacked it. Drones are illegal on campus, for that very reason among others.
The campus is rather photogenic, especially at night. Classes are fully back in session, with proof of vaccination mandatory for all students and staff; but I don't know if the campus is open to the general public again yet. Shouldn't be too long now, as the rules gradually relax. The light has been marvelous in that neighborhood, but shifting away the past wee due to an unusual record dry heat spell for this time of year. But cool soft light fog is already starting to head back in today.
And nice try, Michael. I actually have admired some of AA's crispness in portraiture, while others have not. I'm not sure who the subject exactly is, but he's obviously not a Nobel Prize winner because he's actually wearing pants and not just boxer shorts, and even remembered to put on shoes too! Plus that semi-bald forehead, about to be made even more billiard-ball looking due to a wide angle lens closeup, with its slicked-back hair, doesn't look a thing like the wild hair of a real genius like Einstein, Minor White, or the Professor in Back to the Future. Apparently some Administration type instead, whom AA was expected to honor. But glad to hear from you anyway. I guess you needed something to do while blockading the Detroit Bridge with your semi truck.
Oh ...a note on technique. AA was obviously using "fill flash", bouncing light off his own bald scalp to create a reflective glare atop the head of his subject. Who else would have thunk of that? He always liked to have something Zone VIII in the scene.
Actually, that's Edwin McMillan, who did win the Nobel prize in 1951.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/ch.../biographical/
"I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."
AA's Fiat Lux series, part of the University of California system's history from that era.
https://www.kqed.org/arts/107969/fia..._of_california
Some of the "stuff" AA did to put food on the table, roof over head before fame and notoriety from his landscape prints.
Bernice
Thanks, Mark. One of the Cyclotron guys. I had a number of friends who worked in that building, now themselves retired. AA took special pride in that project because he was a UCB alumnus. Lots and lots of those around here, including under my own roof - which reminds me, I better get the carpet vacuumed before she gets back. Bye.
As the folks at UC worked on cyclotron variants, Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky at Stanford went for the linear version..
https://sites.slac.stanford.edu/cro/...ship/biography
Lawrence Livermore Labs is a product of this group at UCB.
Often not appreciated is the long term effect the UC system impressed upon all of California back then and to this day. Add to this Stanford, Cal Tech and more.
Bernice
That would have been his assistant's fault. He can't reach the dark slide from where he is sitting. He can barely reach the shutter release.
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