Ansel Adams...

[JeffGreene]

According to Brooks Jensen in Lenswork 67,

"Ansel Adams is supposed to have said that a photographer will have a grasp of the medium when they've made about 10,000 negatives."


Brooks stated that it took him 25 years to reach that point in film work. He then went on to state that he felt it would take a working photographer about 10 weeks in today's world.

He revised his estimate after that statement, stating that a photographer's vision still required about a decade to mature. 😕

What does this say for the amateur today, many of whom have been making pictures since childhood? Are there other variables that would apply for amateurs limited to business trips, weekends, vacations and the catch-as- catch-can? 🙄

Should amateurs spend some time souping film to develop the proper appreciation. 😀

But seriously, I've learned an enormous amount over the past three years on this forum. What do those of you out there who are as obsessed with making pictures/images as many of us are, think?

I look forward to your thoughts/

Respectfully,

Jeff

 

[Mudman]

I think that when I look at my negatives from 3 years ago, there are some beauties among a whole lot of fugly shots, and that I'm shooting much much better now then back then. I've been shooting with SLRs (thus making me an avid amateur I guess) for about 6 years now, but I don't think the concepts of light, focal length and aperture and speed and composition have really sunk in until the last year or so. Shooting with a rangefinder recently has made me even more aware of what I'm doing to get a photo. I think that to truly advance as a photographer, you need that awareness, and until it comes you won't advance any farther than your current state.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Jeff,

Basically codswallop.

Some people have a spark that can be fanned to greatness very quickly.

With others, the spark gutters and dies very fast, though they do not always realize this: we have all met those with a desperate but manifestly unrequited love for photography.

Many more -- I count myself among them, and I suspect you feel the same way about yourself -- go on improving slowly but steadily.

Trying to quantify it is a complete waste of time. Otherwise I could just put a 4GB card in my M8 [NOTE EDIT] and hold the button down, and two hours later I'd have made 10,000 images (reformatting a couple of times en route). A hundred well-thought-out and carefully analyzed images are worth 10,000 that are shot for the sake of reaching a quota -- and 10 images may teach one photographer more than 10,000 will teach another.

Cheers,

R.

 

[sunsworth]

Otherwise I could just put a 4GB card in my M9 and hold the button down...

Would you care to expand on this Roger <grin>.

The original quote is rubbish. As Roger says, some people can more or less pick up a camera and produce the goods, others spend a lifetime getting nowhere.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Would you care to expand on this Roger <grin>.

The original quote is rubbish. As Roger says, some people can more or less pick up a camera and produce the goods, others spend a lifetime getting nowhere.

M9: whoops! If only!

I believe there will be an M9 at photokina and I have heard rumours it is being tested -- but the latter are not from reliable sources.

Original edited for typo!

Cheers,

R.

 

[JeffGreene]

Steve...

Steve...

Would you care to expand on this Roger <grin>.

The original quote is rubbish. .....

Granted 😛 , so you're saying that one either has the "gift" of vision or doesn't.

Roger, did state that most of us do labor for years with gradual improvements. How is that at odds with what Adams is supposed to have said? Wouldn't the making of 10,000 negatives lead to the kind of gradual improvement of vision for a working journeyman photog., amateur or pro?

It's easy too dismiss things out of hand, but given existing technology, what kind of apprenticeship/journeyman period can the average photog. committed to digital technology expect?

There's a lot of excitement about M8's and RD1's gearwise on this forum. Should people first spend time with a more traditional rangefinder, either fixed lens or non-fixed? 😀

What do you think? 🙄

 

[MikeL]

I'd guess how many it takes depends on the quality of feedback, whether your own or from someone else.

 

[gavinlg]

When you are a professional, you are forced to make excellent imagery all the time, everytime. Every job you do pushes you in some way, and if you're good enough, that means your pushing your limits everyday. In most cases, amateur photographers may only push their limits once in a while - it really makes a large difference.

 

[Roger Hicks]

The weasel words are 'a grasp of the medium' -- which is essentially a meaningless statement.

Some people can be brilliant in a year or less; others, never. Digital MAY speed the process, but equally, looking at real, paid-for prints instead of reviewing things on the screen may concentrate the mind better too.

Concentrate on the process, not the goal, i.e., take pictures. Lots of them. Look at them hard. Compare them: it's usually quite easy to say 'A is better than B' (especially with side-by-side prints instead of sequential pics on a screen), even if it takes you a while to work out why A is better than B. If at all possible, ask the opinions of others whose opinions you respect (but don't overload them).

Don't neglect books and websites. You might care to take a look at

http://www.rogerandfrances.com/photoschool/ps critique.html

Work on the process, rather than imagining there is a goal, and you'll get better as fast as you can, which may be very fast, or never.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Ade-oh]

I may wind up being stoned to death for blasphemy but I have to say that I don't find Ansel Adams' photography terribly interesting. Technical proficiency with a large format camera doubtless takes some mastering but it seems to me that 'vision' is either there or not, and if you don't have it, then exposing 10,000 or 100,000 negatives won't help you find it.

 

[sunsworth]

I may wind up being stoned to death for blasphemy but I have to say that I don't find Ansel Adams' photography terribly interesting.

Same here. Technically brilliant, but cold IMHO.

 

[JeffGreene]

I may wind up being stoned to death for blasphemy but I have to say that I don't find Ansel Adams' photography terribly interesting. Technical proficiency with a large format camera doubtless takes some mastering but it seems to me that 'vision' is either there or not, and if you don't have it, then exposing 10,000 or 100,000 negatives won't help you find it.

So you're saying that time spent in composition/photography seminar/courses/workshops is not worth pursuing? You either are born with the gift, or not. Is getting paid for our work the bottom-line criterion of vision? 😀

Adams, as I'm sure you're aware, did do some non-landscape work. Regardless, there are many wedding/portrait photo pro's, who while not possessing Adams's vision labor away day after day making a living. How do we identify "vision"? 🙄

Is the marketplace the sole criterion. Does portfolio acceptance by Lenswork, Aperture, B&W or some other art photography platform represent that criterion?

What do you think?

Respectfully,

Jeff

 

[kbg32]

I may wind up being stoned to death for blasphemy but I have to say that I don't find Ansel Adams' photography terribly interesting. Technical proficiency with a large format camera doubtless takes some mastering but it seems to me that 'vision' is either there or not, and if you don't have it, then exposing 10,000 or 100,000 negatives won't help you find it.

I have to say, I agree with this. I find Adams, while technically proficient, to be boring, and Adams himself to be a windbag. He and Newhall produced one of the greatest conspiracies in photo history. One that upon learning about, I can never seem to understand their hostility at the time. Newhall was a friend of Adams and one of his greatest proponents. If it wasn't for Newhall, Adams would never be on the pedestal as people would believe.

 

[Ade-oh]

So you're saying that time spent in composition/photography seminar/courses/workshops is not worth pursuing? You either are born with the gift, or not...

That's not what I'm saying at all. We need to learn the craft of photography and we need to learn how to capture our 'vision' with our cameras but fetishising technique - which I think Adams did - is no better than fetishising equipment.

 

[sunsworth]

Becoming a very good photographer doesn't take talent.

I couldn't disagree more, in fact I'd say it's one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever read online. If that were the case then anyone could become a good or even great photographer and that most certainly isn't the case.

If you genuinely think that anyone could take photographs like Salgado, McCullin, Boubat and that they weren't _talented_, then I'm sorry but you are very, very mistaken IMHO

Practise will make you _better_, but it will not necessarily make you good. I could practise the piano every day, I would get better, but I'd never be a pianist.

 

[Tuolumne]

I may wind up being stoned to death for blasphemy but I have to say that I don't find Ansel Adams' photography terribly interesting. Technical proficiency with a large format camera doubtless takes some mastering but it seems to me that 'vision' is either there or not, and if you don't have it, then exposing 10,000 or 100,000 negatives won't help you find it.

Stone him. Stone him to death. 😀

/T

 

[Dektol Dan]

St. Ansel Banished to Ignominity By The Ignorant

St. Ansel Banished to Ignominity By The Ignorant

I may wind up being stoned to death for blasphemy but I have to say that I don't find Ansel Adams' photography terribly interesting. Technical proficiency with a large format camera doubtless takes some mastering but it seems to me that 'vision' is either there or not, and if you don't have it, then exposing 10,000 or 100,000 negatives won't help you find it.

This reminds me of the tale of the blind men and the elephant. To one he was the trunk of tree, to another a snake, to another a rope.....

Ignorance en masse is blindness en masse.

I'm old. I was raised studying Adams, Weston, Stieglitz and Lange. Although taught by my father who was a professional photographer and painter from a young age, my first college classes in photography were in large format camera. That was 101 in the day.

I've read the preceding speculations as to whether experience and criticism matter and to what degree. I believe you cannot have enough of both and the quality of both experience and criticism matter.

Not appreciating Adams is fine. In this world it is permissible to be ignorant, but it is foolish to boast of it.

As far as 'getting to enlightenment sooner' with a digital camera goes, repeating mistakes counts for ****. When synths and samplers became readily cheap and available did musicianship improve? Quite the opposite. Instead we have acceptance of the mundane as well as misplaced pride in individualism.

Personal opinion based in wrong thinking is ignorance or lack of experience. Knowing what one likes and dislikes is the measure of consumerism or vanity but rarely does it rise to the level of constructive criticism. It surely hasn't in this thread.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Adams plowed the field we harvest. While you might not care for his photography, we all benefit from work he did. Somewhere inside the brain of that fancy DSLR are the rules from his Zone system.

No. The Zone System is a fairly small and jargon-ridden subset of basic sensitometry as laid down by Hurter and Driffield in 1890. The naming of Zones is a work of genius but the Zone System has almost nothing to do with exposure meter design -- especially in DSLRs.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Ade-oh]

This reminds me of the tale of the blind men and the elephant. To one he was the trunk of tree, to another a snake, to another a rope.....

Ignorance en masse is blindness en masse.

I'm old. I was raised studying Adams, Weston, Stieglitz and Lange. Although taught by my father who was a professional photographer and painter from a young age, my first college classes in photography were in large format camera. That was 101 in the day.

I've read the preceding speculations as to whether experience and criticism matter and to what degree. I believe you cannot have enough of both and the quality of both experience and criticism matter.

Not appreciating Adams is fine. In this world it is permissible to be ignorant, but it is foolish to boast of it.

As far as 'getting to enlightenment sooner' with a digital camera goes, repeating mistakes counts for ****. When synths and samplers became readily cheap and available did musicianship improve? Quite the opposite. Instead we have acceptance of the mundane as well as misplaced pride in individualism.

Personal opinion based in wrong thinking is ignorance or lack of experience. Knowing what one likes and dislikes is the measure of consumerism or vanity but rarely does it rise to the level of constructive criticism. It surely hasn't in this thread.

Ah yes, the dull thud of conformity...

 

[sunsworth]

Not appreciating Adams is fine. In this world it is permissible to be ignorant, but it is foolish to boast of it.

So what you are saying is that not to like Adams is ignorant and saying so is foolish? Sorry, but I've seen classic Adams prints 'in the flesh', and I find them sterile and as mentioned by someone else boring. Technically excellent yes, but uninteresting - to _me_. If you love his work that's fine, but don't assume that you are the sole arbiter of good taste.