I was just looking at a photo....

"Aaron" wrote


I feel a small measure of guilt invoking the name of the master, but
let us not forget the *great lengths* to which Ansel Adams went in the
darkroom to achieve most of the images that stand out in our memories.

His book "The Making of 50 Images" [or something to that effect]
has the 'before' pictures - straight prints from the negative.
Many look like any-old-print back from 1950's drugstore processing.

--
Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Darkroom Automation: F-Stop Timers, Enlarging Meters
http://www.nolindan.com/da/index.htm
n o lindan at ix dot netcom dot com

And lo, Nicholas O. Lindan emerged from the ether
and spake thus:
"Aaron" wrote


I feel a small measure of guilt invoking the name of the master, but
let us not forget the *great lengths* to which Ansel Adams went in the
darkroom to achieve most of the images that stand out in our memories.

His book "The Making of 50 Images" [or something to that effect]
has the 'before' pictures - straight prints from the negative.
Many look like any-old-print back from 1950's drugstore processing.

I own "The Making of 40 Photographs" and I don't recall that it has
such prints... Perhaps I should look again. What it *does* have,
though, are very complete descriptions written by Ansel himself
outlining the process he took to make each photograph, including the
types of developers, types of papers, reasoning behind them, etc.

The man was truly a master of his craft. He could see the intricacies
of the process all the way down the line to the final print while he
was standing behind his tripod. At the moment he pressed the shutter,
he knew how he would achieve his ends.

I had an opportunity to see "Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico," one
of my all-time favorite Adams pieces, at Art Institute Chicago while I
was there earlier this year. The exhibit was all about enhancement of
photographs and so they had, as Nicholas describes, the unprocessed
print right next to the processed one.

*Completely breathtaking.*

Not only does the processed print look as amazing in person as you
would hope it would, but the processing performed on it is
*indisputably* a major source of its brilliance.

--
Aaron
http://www.fisheyegallery.com
http://www.singleservingphoto.com