Ansel Adams

I recently reread the introduction to the book Ansel Adams at 100. The book came out at the same time as the AA exhibit was traveling the world back in 2002. The intro. is by John Szarkowski, who has written many insightful commentaries and histories on photography. For some reason these words about the growth and changes in Adam’s work over his lifetime really made me think about how a person can evolve as a photographer over the course of a life.

Here are the words:
His early work was defined in graphic terms–dependent on the choice of vantage point and framing. Later, coherence increasingly was dependent on the perfection of the tonal scale which binds the picture together.

Without even looking at specific photos, those words seemed to ring true as I thought of Adams’ late 1920s image of Half Dome–Monolith. Certainly his use of a deep red filter to darken the sky and the strength of the tonal range helped to carry the day in this photo, but it was his vantage point and the awesome strength of this hunk of granite that made the photo compelling. Compare this to Moonrise, Hernandez, NM some 20 years later, which I did in my mind. More so than the small crosses and the simple buildings in this photo, the range and perfection of the tonal values raise this potentially mundane image to the photographic heights. It is one of my favorite photographs of all time. I turned the pages to find those photos, and I knew Szarkowski was on target. Of course, there are lots of things yet to say about Ansel Adams’ work–I don’t think we will ever run dry of his inspiration, technically nor emotionally–but I think Szarkowski’s analysis is informative. As our vision modifies itself as we age, each thing we “see” as a potential subject will demand of us the application of principals, technology, vision, even our changing senses of love and life and who we are to the photograph that we end up creating. It is daunting to think about the possibilities, yet inspiring to think of what Adams, at least, was able to do up to the end of his long life.

Spring Barn Artists’ Show


We are planning three Barn Artists’ Gallery shows this year, and the first one is coming up in April. We are glad that Delbert Weese is going to be able to join us and show some of his really fine paintings. They are unique, and Marcia and I are proud to say we own one.

Carl, Kathy, and I have all been working on our personal portfolios of work and are anxious to reveal some new work to the public. April 17 and 18 are the dates. Hope we have some nice weather for a good gathering.

Earthquakes and photographs

On my long driving trip to Winnemucca, I had lots of time to think, and not surprisingly the recent earthquakes around the world weighed on my mind. One of the most surprising facts about the Chilean quake was that it was so massive that geologists say that it caused the earth to spin differently–enough so to make our days a nano-second shorter. Talk about power.

This thought came back to me as I was sitting in a workshop session looking at the wonderful and powerful images of Jodi Cobb, most of whose work has appeared in National Geographic. The impact of her photos caused me to realize that a great photographer can make the world actually stop. Like the impact of an earthquake, a photo that is perfect and clear and revealing of life can make the world frozen for all to see. Complexity is illuminated when the earth can stand still for 1/250th of a second or whatever shutter speed Jodi Cobb or any of us might be using. In her work I saw what I have alluded to before–A Moment’s Monument.

Shooting the West



I just got back from 10 days in Winnemucca, Nevada at a photo workshop called Shooting the West. It was an interesting experience, and I met some nice photographers from the area. One, John Hill of Reno, is pursuing the publishing of his dad’s experience selling and installing motorized windmills in the 30s and 40s. I thought it was a great idea, especially in light of the rekindled interest in wind energy today. Saw lots of turbines in western Nebraska and throughout Wyoming.

Also met Bill Bundrock from Winnemucca via Libby, Montana. Bill worked the Libby mines for 18 years and now is wanting to write his memoirs of his experiences. Again, I think this is a worthwhile story to tell. The workshop had several sessions that might open the door to both John and Bill’s ideas. Hope so, anyway.
I will relate more about my workshop experience, but wanted to share a couple of images from my six days on the road driving out there and back. My worst experiences were on snow-covered I-80 in Nevada. I have never gone 30 miles an hour on an interstate highway before. The images here are from quieter parts of the journey. One is Courthouse and Jail Rock from Nebraska and the other I call Wyoming Highway Art.

Beautiful and simple and true

I saw a portrait in the newspaper today, and it reminded me of an issue I have with photos taken at an angle leaving the horizon line running diagonal or nearly so. To illustrate the story that went with it, this image was a portrait of a man with the foreground an essential part of the story to be told. However, everything in the picture was at an angle, even the man was leaning backwards in the frame. This type of shooting has become quite prevalent in recent years, and I really wonder why. There is nothing about the photo that demanded this shoot-from-the-hip approach. For me (old school as I am), leave the odd angles for the photographers who are grabbing a photo the only way they can: Robert Capa on the beach at Normandy, dodging bullets and trying to capture one of the momentous events in world history, for example. Or we have all extended our cameras at arm’s length over our heads trying to shoot above a crowd to capture a telling moment. There are, obviously, reasons why the world looks askew in such photographs. And I am not talking about the creativity of studio portraiture here either. I like what some photographers have done raising the bar on family and wedding portraiture. But when it comes to newspaper work, even illustrating a feature story with a portrait, I think the odd angles are as bad as a flash hot spot behind the subject’s head.

To PLAN the composition in order to distort the horizon line and give the photo some sense of immediacy it does not have within it seems to transport the photographer into the picture. Unlike other documentary work, it is true a portrait often demands more of the photographer’s invisible hand–getting the right light, moving around the subject, tilting of a head, moving in tight. In those cases, the photographer remains invisible. But warping the interior of the photographic rectangle is, well, put it this way: why not just let the photographer’s shadow appear in the foreground of the pic like those old family portraits where the photographer dutifully puts the sun over his back whenever he shoots? In a like manner, photographers who purposefully distort their horizon line shout to the viewer, I AM HERE!
To get a good example of using natural lines in a photo, look at the POYi archives for 1995. There you will find the photos of Torsten Kjellstrand, newspaper photographer of the year, who at the time was shooting for The Herald in Jasper, Indiana. Look at the opening shot of Torsten’s photo story on the farming brothers. That opening shot has straight horizontal and vertical lines–except for the two brothers who are walking along, one helping the other, bent as if leaning into the wind. In a way they are, but this is the wind of old age and hardscrabble work on a farm. To me, it is a perfect picture. It is beautiful, simple, and true. It needs the straight lines of the house and the pump and the sidewalk to contrast the bend of the human torsos. This picture opens the photo story like the opening paragraph of a great novel. It evokes emotion and gives us all the essential details that will be developed and revealed to us. Nothing is contrived. The photographer is invisible. The story unfolds.