I have been busy over the last couple of weeks with a number of other things, including getting I&P ready for assessment and prints despatched, so have not had a chance to do as much work as I would normally. Nevertheless I have at least been able to catch up with some reading, particularly on Beauty and the Sublime, which we will come to next in the course material. I have also been able to do some reading about Anselm adams, who is the focus of this particular part of the course.

When I started out on this module I identified one of the things that I would probably end up doing is re-evaluating my views on Adams and his approach to landscape photography. That I have now started to do by reading his book ‘Examples’ (1983). Subtitled “The making of 40 photographs” this is a sort of blow-by-blow account of the technical aspects of a selection of his photographs and how they were made and printed.

Of particular value to me is that this book has introduced me to a wider range of his work than I had otherwise been aware of. I am reasonably familiar with his work for the US National Park Service and have seen plenty of his other work, particularly in and around Yosemite. This book though has introduced me to some slightly more abstract work, and some striking portraits. This non-landscape work is something that I would like to see more of and will make some effort to track down. So far as the landscape work is concerned, although I still admire it and am impressed by it, it still does not really move or inspire me.

Whilst I can see the point of the position adopted by the f/64 group and their opposition to “pictorialism” and its use of photography as a sort of imitation of painting I cannot but help feel that much of the “straight” landscape work is still in essence pictorialist but with a sharper focus. The emphasis is on creating striking, impressive, beautiful, and I guess sublime, compositions – certainly very successfully – but as I have said I am left unmoved either an emotional or an intellectual level. I much prefer to look at work that carries some meaning beyond the surface appearance and with much of this sort of work I simply do not get it.

Far more interesting I find, for example, the work of Edward Weston whose landscapes tend much more towards the abstract, as illustrated by his “Dunes, Oceano” that appears in the course material. I will though keep an open mind, look at more of Adams’s work and see where it takes me.

So far as the book itself is concerned, it is interesting to follow Adams’s approach to his work and some of the little anecdotes are interesting and enlightening. However a litany of technical details repeated over forty photos eventually makes for a pretty dull read and ultimately there is a limit to how much I think I have learned so far from a technical point of view. As I have written elsewhere, particularly in the context of EYV, I am interested in, and am continuing to experiment with film, not least with my 4×5 large format camera, which I guess is not a million miles removed from some of the equipment that Adams used. I still feel that going back to basics is good discipline and it helps to reacquire some of the fundamental skills and knowledge that is perhaps otherwise at risk of getting lost with all-singing, all-dancing digital cameras. There are though limits. I do not get much from the discussion of lenses, not least because my lens (which is admittedly the only one that I currently have for this camera) although quite old is still a much more up to date piece of kit than the things Adams was using back in the 1930s and ’40s. The discussion of filters also does not help much as I do not presently have any (and indeed have no idea how I would use them with my current lens!). I do wonder what someone who has not worked with film, whose only experience is with digital equipment, would make of and get from much of this technical detail.

To be fair I think the problem stems from my own ignorance and lack of experience, rather than any underlying fault on the part of the book or adams’s writing and I guess I should use it as a spur to go out and learn more. In part I am at least going to do that once I start making prints directly from my negatives: I now have a light and timer unit that works with my camera, transforming it into an enlarger, and just need to sort out a darkroom. I suspect that once I start printing, much more of what he wrote, not least on the Zone system (on which I do not propose to say anything for now as I see that it is coming up in the course material as a topic in its own right, other than to say that it is at least now starting to make some sense to me) will have more of a practical impact and influence.

For the time being I think the most valuable thing I get from this work is the idea of visualisation. I guess it ought to be obvious but clearly it is not that it should not simply be a matter of looking through the viewfinder but of thinking from the outset about what the final image is intended to look like. I see this as particularly relevant when working with film and printing traditionally. I see no reason though why it should not also apply when working digitally and using the likes of Photoshop. I certainly feel in my own practice that I have become more thoughtful and considered about composition in camera before releasing the shutter and that as a result I am making stronger work. It also fits with my general preference not to indulge in any more post-production processing in Photoshop than I can realistically get away with. This is something for me to develop further (pardon the pun!) as I do more film based work in the darkroom.

Adams, A, (1983).  Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs.  Boston:  Little, Brown & Co

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