Visualization: Where an Expressive Image Begins

In April 1927, a 25-year-old Ansel Adams trekked up to the “diving board” on the west shoulder of Half Dome in Yosemite. He made a dramatic image of the monolith using a mild yellow filter to darken the sky a bit..a generally accepted practice in those days.

But what Ansel felt about the scene was more dramatic than what he knew the yellow filter would give him. With one glass plate left unexposed, he broke with tradition and made a final exposure using a red filter that he hoped would result in an image that was more in tune with what he imagined the final image should be.

The resulting image was a turning point for Ansel. For the first time, he was conscious of the difference between what his camera saw (the literal) and what he saw in his mind’s eye (the expressive) as the final print. He ultimately came to refer to this freedom from recording only what the camera and lens could capture as visualization. 

By itself, visualization doesn’t guarantee a successful or compelling final image, but it does set the stage for the ensuing choreography of photographic steps and is probably the single most important in creating an expressive image.

In this one-hour interactive online workshop, you’ll explore visualization and how to practice it in your own photography…going beyond the snapshot and creating an image that’s personal, shares a feeling, an experience or a reaction.

Among the things you’ll talk about:

• The importance of intention
• Disconnecting yourself from equipment and technology to imagine a scene as a print
• How visualization dictates the techniques required to achieve the vision
• Using a viewing card to isolate element in your scene
• “Looking” with your other senses…not just with your eye
• Eliminating “surplussage”
• The “perfect” is the enemy of the “most useful” when it comes to capture or negative

Limited to 5 participants. $50 per person. Sixty minutes of fun and learning.

Current schedule:

New sessions coming January 2021.