Affordable Authentic Ansel Adams Prints One of Ansel Adams’ personal commitments was to share his energy and abilities in support of the things he believed in, most notably, photography and the environment. In the cause of both, Ansel and his wife, Virginia, selected six photographs of Yosemite and offered them for sale through her family…
Special Edition Print Technical Data
In the spirit of Ansel’s openness and willingness to share his approach and technique,here’s a look at how these prints were made when Ansel was alive, and how I make them today in my own darkroom in Santa Fe. Although there have been updates and improvements, the process is still basically the same as it…
Making the Special Edition Prints
Ansel’s Choice I became Ansel Adams’ assistant in the middle of 1974, working with Ted Orland, who had been Ansel’s primary assistant for the previous two years. When Ted left in early 1975, I inherited not only the responsibility of keeping all of Ansel’s photographic operations running, but also the making of the Yosemite Special…
More on Using Filters
A previous post discussed the basics of how and why colored filters can change the relationships of different subject colors in black-and-white photography. This writing will give some visual examples of the effects of filters in BW work. The example above shows a still-life scene containing a wide range of neutrals and colors, rendered in…
Filters – How to Choose and Use
Filters – How to Choose and Use Part 1 I think the thing I like most about working in black-and-white is the fact that it’s much more an expression of how I feel about a subject than a representation of “reality.” The world doesn’t exist in Black-and-White (my mother told me that…) so a…
Yosemite Special Edition Photographs
An Ansel Adams Legacy One of Ansel Adams’ primary personal commitments was to share his energy and abilities in support of the things he believed in, most notably, photography and the environment. In the cause of both, Ansel and his wife, Virginia, selected six photographs of Yosemite and offered them for sale through her family…
Understanding Lenses – Depth of Field
Where do you focus, and how does the aperture affect an image? In a certain way, the opening question should be the other way around! There is a law of physics that governs the relationship between shutter speed and aperture (f-stop). Shutter speeds are pretty easy to understand: 1/60 second is one half as much…
The Zone System and Digital – Let your Spot Meter do the Work
As I discussed in a previous blog, effective application of the Zone System (ZS) really requires the use of a reliable hand-held spot meter. There are basically two kinds of spot meters, those with analog dials for calculating exposure and those with digital displays. While both can afford effective results, the ones with analog dials…
Can the Zone System Go Digital?
In a word: YES! The Zone System (ZS) can be an integral and important part of any digital photographer’s workflow because it allows you to plan and predict an image’s tonal values rather than letting the camera make the decision. The computerized metering systems in modern cameras are really amazing, and a lot of the…
Ansel Adams, Leica, and Yosemite in April 2012
News Flash: Experience the Leica S2 in Yosemite! Students attending my April Ansel Adams Gallery workshop, “Ansel Adams’ Yosemite: The Art of Seeing,” will have a rare opportunity to photograph with the Leica S2, a premier medium-format digital camera that retails for approximately $28,000 and was developed exclusively for digital photography. It’s based on a…