Ansel Adam's - The Camera, Negative and Print Books

[OutdoorsLover]

Hi all,

I was on a FaceBook forum the other day, and someone mentioned that his favorite books were Ansel Adam's The Camera, The Negative and The Print. I asked him why, and what he'd gotten out of the books, in particular in the digital age, but he didn't respond. So to that end, I'm curious if anyone here is familiar with the books, and how they may be useful in the digital photography age? Especially when it comes to capturing and processing Black & White images.

Cheers!

[langier]

I bought set in the 1970s and Ansel signed them for me. He was a great photographic craftsman, practiced his teachings and was always sharing of his time, advice and experience to the benefit of all.

The gist is about testing, practice and craftsmanship in Ansel's books is timeless and is totally applicable to today's digital workflow since so many think it's simply about the camera and some presets and recipes. As a friend once told me a lot of today's photography is like polishing a turd...

Real vision and craftsmanship usually takes a lot of time and practice to get it right. Digital makes it easier and faster but not always better.

Because of my years of practice in analog, especially dye-transfer printing and crossing into the printing trades, transition into digital was easy for me. Many of my colleagues floundered as they knew only the basics; few were into the nuts-and-bolts or getting their hands dirty in the Dektol. All those hours in the darkroom, reading, and out in the field, paid off. The base of it all was to read whatever I could get my hands upon back in the day when you needed to know how to use a card catalog and Dewey Decimal System.

Two other books by Ansel in the series were Natural Light Photography and Artificial Light Photography. The latter of the two was his weakest because the bulk was written in the days of floods and then bulky and clunky electronic flash units and in all reality, Ansel was really a maestro of the landscape though his studio work and portraits, along with color photography, were still quite competent.

[OutdoorsLover]

I bought set in the 1970s and Ansel signed them for me. He was a great photographic craftsman, practiced his teachings and was always sharing of his time, advice and experience to the benefit of all.

The gist is about testing, practice and craftsmanship in Ansel's books is timeless and is totally applicable to today's digital workflow since so many think it's simply about the camera and some presets and recipes. As a friend once told me a lot of today's photography is like polishing a turd...

Real vision and craftsmanship usually takes a lot of time and practice to get it right. Digital makes it easier and faster but not always better.

Because of my years of practice in analog, especially dye-transfer printing and crossing into the printing trades, transition into digital was easy for me. Many of my colleagues floundered as they knew only the basics; few were into the nuts-and-bolts or getting their hands dirty in the Dektol. All those hours in the darkroom, reading, and out in the field, paid off. The base of it all was to read whatever I could get my hands upon back in the day when you needed to know how to use a card catalog and Dewey Decimal System.

Two other books by Ansel in the series were Natural Light Photography and Artificial Light Photography. The latter of the two was his weakest because the bulk was written in the days of floods and then bulky and clunky electronic flash units and in all reality, Ansel was really a maestro of the landscape though his studio work and portraits, along with color photography, were still quite competent.

Ah, yes. Film! I started shooting film in 1982, and continued until around the early 2000's, when I switched to a Canon 10D to do my weddings & portraits with. In High School, I dabbled with the darkroom phase, but mostly sent the film out to be processed at a local lab. For weddings & portrait work, all the 120/220 and 35mm stuff was sent across the country to a lab that did great work.

I live in California, and have a house in Carmel where Ansel, Weston and many other's lived and formed the Center for Photographic Arts. I met Ansel's grandson and a few other of his relatives there, sometime last year at an event. Great times.

I'm not familiar with the Natural Light & Artificial light books. I may have to investigate those too. I'm wanting to learn to post process B&W images better, and was hoping that I might gain some knowledge and insight from one of the aforementioned books. I know all of the digital techniques but lack the vision and direction that I feel I need, to really take the images to the next level.

[langier]

Spent a lot of time in the Monterey Peninsula over the years and my mentor & colleague Al Weber lived near Ansel who I got to visit as a teen then later take his Yosemite Workshop.

My colleagues Bautista/Moon teach the basics and above in digital in Pacific Grove, now a lot virtually and Kim Weston is a master of B&W, inheriting a lot of good photo genes and still does workshops. Another local icon and master is Hunter Witherill.

Though I used to first use a b&w scanner back in the late 1980s for b&w scans then used to blend channels in Photoshop, then evolving using the B&W layers and also basic B&W conversion in ACR/LR, my preference for the best B&W is to use DXO/Nik Silver Efex since it's a fast and easy way to get your image into the ball park. If I'm doing a bunch of conversions, many times I'll start in ACR just to speed up the process. I'm seldom working on Singular Images (BTW, another AA title worth checking out), and usually have to process dozens at a time for various projects and clients.

One of the presenters on the recent Dave Cross Photo Summit II virtual conference was Daniel Gray and he had a few nice tips and an ebook with good info.

It's been many years since I've cracked a book on how-to regarding B&W digital, but I'd say, just look at lots of work on line and published in books. Find a style you like then start trying to emulate, then evolve so you don't have to start at ground zero. With practice and experimentation, you should do well.

In any case, what once took hours to craft in the lab, now takes but minutes or seconds to accomplish and while my printer cranks away making a great photograph, I can be starting on the next image! My prints today are even better than what I did in the darkroom so many years ago and I'm not killing hours to craft a single print, let alone dealing with all the chemicals and vast quantities of water, only to start the process all over when there was more fine-tuning needed along the way.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I learned all about exposure from Ansel's five books Larry mentions, and I agree 100% with his assessments (including the Artificial Light book.) I have owned them all since the early 1960s, and thanks to Ansel, my black-and-white darkroom prints have been considered excellent by many.

I got my first digital camera (Canon 10D) for a trip to the Canadian Rockies in 2004, since I worried that airport security x-rays might ruin my film. Learning Photoshop was a bear, and getting good prints from my Epson 2200 printer was iffy. Often I would give up on the digital stuff and go back in my darkroom to make a "real" print. Until one day, in the darkroom, I realized there was an adjustment I wanted that would be much easier in Photoshop.

With much additional work I eventually achieved my goal of making digital prints from scans of old negatives or darkroom prints that even I could not distinguish from my best darkroom prints.

As Larry suggests, the principles of light and exposure that Ansel explains still apply in the digital world.

[OutdoorsLover]

So, all of that being said, if I were to read (or start with) one book, which would it be?

[kimballistic]

Start in order, with The Camera.  Pretty amazing what one can do with a large format view camera.

[Rhossydd]

It's a brilliant series of books that so many of us older photographers learnt a huge amount from.
The Camera is a wonderful primer on how cameras work and a huge amount is applicable to contemporary photography.
A lot of the wet process detail in the two later books may not be relevant to digital working, but much of the discussion on the esthetics of image making is still important, especially so if you're working in monochrome.
Of course it's also illustrated with some magnificent images too.

Not books for the point 'n shoot crowd, but if their content makes you stop and make more considered images that can only be a good thing.

It would have fascinating to see what Ansel would have said in a fifth book of the series if he could have added one on digital processes.

[john beardsworth]

So to that end, I'm curious if anyone here is familiar with the books, and how they may be useful in the digital photography age? Especially when it comes to capturing and processing Black & White images.

For me the biggest benefit comes from reflecting on his use of coloured lens filters and translating the thought process into how you fine tune your conversion of the colour digital image to B&W. As a practical example his books show how he might use a red filter to darken a blue sky, make the clouds stand out, and he'll explain how this darkening at the top of the frame directs the viewer's eye down towards the landscape. So you're thinking about capturing more detail from the scene, but also about rendering those areas darker or lighter as part of a greyscale composition, and the psychology of pointing the viewer to whatever you want to say about the subject. Adams may be applying this B&W conversion to the negative, but it's an equally-promising thought process when you use the B&W panel in Lightroom, the coloured filters in Silver Efex, Photoshop's B&W adjustment layer etc.

That's a practical example and really simplifies what you can learn and then transfer into digital B&W, but those books contain so many useful thoughts and observations. Another that stands out is the role of edges in B&W, so he'll discuss edge burning as a way to push the viewer into the scene or how you might review the picture for any bright details close to the frame's edge which could direct the viewer out of the picture and into the white print border. You might change your crop, clone, darken it etc, but the key is to look for this potential problem.

So for me the books remain interesting even if you don't have any intention of shooting film cameras, and a lot of photographers can learn plenty from them.

[john beardsworth]

It would have fascinating to see what Ansel would have said in a fifth book of the series if he could have added one on digital processes.

He would have done. This is from his 1981 introduction to The Negative.

[Rhossydd]

He would have done. This is from his 1981 introduction to The Negative.

Yes, there's mention in one of his books, maybe the autobiography ?, about the impact of digital scanning of his work for publication and potential it had for improving his work.

His colour work is too often forgotten. The fourth book in the series Polaroid Land photography has some wonderful images in it.

[kers]

i have read 'the negative' a few times and it helped me developing my BW. Spend days developing in different ways...

[OutdoorsLover]

i have read 'the negative' a few times and it helped me developing my BW. Spend days developing in different ways...

Developing in what sense?

[kers]

BW negatives with different developers and the zone system etc...

[OutdoorsLover]

BW negatives with different developers and the zone system etc...

Ah, yes. Good old B&W film developing & processing, though I thought you may have meant digital.

[John Nollendorfs]

And then, there's  the B&W bible on processing from Minor White--
https://www.amazon.com/New-Zone-System-Manual/dp/0871001004

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

And then, there's  the B&W bible on processing from Minor White--
https://www.amazon.com/New-Zone-System-Manual/dp/0871001004

I've got two copies of that, too.

It's more useful if you have already understood the Zone System from Ansel's books, which I had done long before my two workshops with Minor.

[Jim Metzger]

I got a lot of information and inspiration from the Life Library of Photography as well as Adam's books. This series offered a broader range of subject matter and exposure (pun intended) to some of the 20th Century's greatest photographers.

That said, I have learned as much in the last several years as I have in the first 45 or so. I am incredibly fortunate to have met and be friends with a photographic printer (he used to own Color Space Imaging here in NYC) who is as good as anyone working out there today. If you saw the Le Corbusier retrospective at MOMA a few years ago you would have seen his work. In a previous post by this OP someone mentioned that you don't know what you don't know. Very true. Talking with my friend about photography was like learning that a language you had been speaking your entire life had thousands of new words to express yourself.

This is a round about way of saying you should keep exploring new avenues of expression but you should have something worth saying. One of the reasons I come to this site everyday as well as TOP and a few others is I feel I always have something new to learn. It is what has kept me interested in photography for the last 54 years.

[langier]

Thinking back and being pragmatic, I'd recommend David Vestal's "Craft of Photography" as he distilled down Ansel's "The Negative" and "The Print" down to more practical practice.

I started as a teen in deciphering Minor White's "Zone System Manual" but it was too etherial for my mind at the time. That was in the middle/start of trying to be an Ansel Adams clone and then in college, the text was David Vestal's book. It was more about doing and learning than going doing the "spiritual" thing of White and the scientific methodology of Ansel's tomes.

After parting from my college and the footsteps of Ansel and his supporters, I took my own path and what I learned in my many college labs classes (another lifetime!) did me well when I started to practice Vestal's approach which did me well for the next fifteen-twenty years as my clients needed color more than b&w and the b&w got put to the side.

I'm glad I was "exposed" to this all since each of these three masters had a different approach and helped lay the groundwork for my b&w practice.

[PeterAit]

Hi all,

I was on a FaceBook forum the other day, and someone mentioned that his favorite books were Ansel Adam's The Camera, The Negative and The Print. I asked him why, and what he'd gotten out of the books, in particular in the digital age, but he didn't respond. So to that end, I'm curious if anyone here is familiar with the books, and how they may be useful in the digital photography age? Especially when it comes to capturing and processing Black & White images.

Cheers!

The books are, of course, all about chemical photography and the zone system. But they can teach about dynamic range, exposure, and other basics of the craft. I bet Adams would have loved digital! And the books are classics, I regret selling mine.

I was fortunate to attend his workshop back in the 80s when he was still active. It was one of the great thrills of my life! To be taught by him, tour his darkroom, and (yes really) have tea with him and his wife Virginia.