Making 40 Photographs: WOW! Great book

[dh003i]

Thank you all who recommended Ansel Adams' book, The Making of 40 Photographs. Wow! What a great series of examples.

I particularly love the portrait of Carolyn Anspacher. Absolutely stunning repose, rationality. He commented that while he liked the effect, some thought it was a portrait of scuplture, referred to as "the stone head". I found it fascinating.

I think I particularly like it because it reminds me of Ayn Rand, even though she doesn't have a striking resemblance to Rand. But the facial expression is what I think of when thinking of Rand, that cold rationality. I wish there was a version of this photo online, so I could show it to my libertarian friends afar.

[aphexafx]

I really want a copy of this book. Thanks for your impressions!

[jackies]

Two words - Get it!!

Jackie

[jon.oman]

I get my copy from the library. Great book!

[Frank Petronio]

It's a nice book but don't fall for Adams' claptrap BS about "previsualizing" the shots he did. He bracketed and guessed and did what-the-hell pictures just like the rest of us.

[dh003i]

It's a nice book but don't fall for Adams' claptrap BS about "previsualizing" the shots he did. He bracketed and guessed and did what-the-hell pictures just like the rest of us.

Haha, that's funny. I didn't really pay much attention to that. What I'm reading now is "The Camera," and the most helpful suggestions I've found are technical, like lens compendium's (which he called a bellows shade).

[Bill_1856]

It's a nice book but don't fall for Adams' claptrap BS about "previsualizing" the shots he did. He bracketed and guessed and did what-the-hell pictures just like the rest of us.

Frank, I'm not sure that's entirely (or always) true. A good reason for the superb quality of his prints is that he was able to fit his negatives to what he anticipated the final print would look like. (Of course, sometimes he often changed what that was.)

[dh003i]

A good reason for the superb quality of his prints is that he was able to fit his negatives to what he anticipated the final print would look like.

Could you explain what you mean by this?

[Frank Petronio]

Adams developed and popularized a system where he assigned 0-10 values on a greyscale from absolute black (Zone 0) to absolute white (Zone 10) and calibrated his exposure and darkroom techniques so that, by using a spotmeter, he had enough control that he could place his subject's values on a print to be where he wanted them to be (or at least he could predict them) based on the spotmeter readings.

The value of which is that you can get the most information into the film -- the optimal exposure -- with the least "burned out" or "filled in" areas. From there, in the darkroom or PC, you can manipulate those values to suit.

It's called the Zone System. Think of it as a predecessor to "Using the Histogram Properly."

A lot of landscape photographers are very fond proponents of it, but even if you don't use it strictly as they do -- and most people don't -- you'll find it's concept very important to getting the best photographs possible, at least from a "well-crafted" traditional point-of-view.

[dh003i]

It's called the Zone System. Think of it as a predecessor to "Using the Histogram Properly."

A lot of landscape photographers are very fond proponents of it, but even if you don't use it strictly as they do -- and most people don't -- you'll find it's concept very important to getting the best photographs possible, at least from a "well-crafted" traditional point-of-view.

Although it's quite impressive to be able to do that without histograms, what is the benefit of learning it now that we do have histograms?