Jason, just a point of clarification. James wrote>>A.A. visualized "Clearing Winter Storm" and developed the neg to print it just the way he visualized it.<< Meaning just what you said, that Ansel like his original visualization and stuck with it. That print is heavily manipulated. As Ansel said "dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships!" I believe the point that James is trying to make is that knowledge of your system is better than not having this knowledge. People always like to point to Weston and say that he didn't use the zone system, realize that we rarely ever see anything that he produced in his first 30 years of photography. So yes time will solve all problems or you can take more direct steps today and calibrate your system.
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