Digital BW, The Print

Well, There are artists, and there are photographers. And there are
Artist/Photographers.  As far as I'm 
concerned, ANYthing goes in a fine art print sold as a work of art. I
Know for a fact that Ansel would have 
Loved digital photography. He was well aware of the new trend coming and
said he was sad he wouldn't be 
around to participate in it.

I don't know if he would or wouldn't have made that moon bigger. If it
were a LITTLE bigger, I don't think
it would matter a bit. It would be up to the individual photographer.
There is a limit of how big that moon could be and still be believeable.
Not much bigger, I think. He surely could have made that image a lot
easier to print if he had been using Photoshop and a computer and inkjet
printer. That photograph was a bear to print, according to Ansel.

Jerry



Stephen Kobrin wrote:
> 
> Paul,
> 
> I think that you are drawing a very fine line in the sand on this
> one.  I fully agree that putting things into a photo after the fact,
> or taking them out for that matter, would compromise the idea
> of "straight photography." However, I suspect that at some point
> extreme tonal and contrast corrections would also.  This is a dicey
> area as a photographer is trying to convey what he or she felt with a
> two dimensional image. It would seem to me, however, that
> if "straight photography" is to have meaning, than more observers
> than just a photographer would have to share that sense of meaning
> about a scene when loooking at it in real time.  There has to be a
> point where changes in tonality and contrast are the moral equivalent
> of inserting or removing objects; for example, what about a scene
> shot in mid-afternoon rendered as late evening?  Nothing implanted or
> removed, but not exactly "straight photography" either.
> 
> I just reread AA's description of "Moonrise..." in The Making of 40
> Photographs and I am not really sure about this one. Hard to tell how
> far removed the image is from what the preverbial objective observer
> would have seen.
> 
> To be clear, I am not arguing that "straight photography" is better
> or worse than anything else.  Just trying to think about limits.
> 
> Steve
> 
> <paul.roark@v...> wrote:
> > Jerry wrote:
> >
> > >Ansel Adams manipulated his prints as much as they
> > >could possibly be manipulated, in the darkroom.
> > >Suggest you read his "The Making of 40
> > >Photographs", which tells how he manipulated them, and why.
> >
> > But this was within the limits of an understood ethic.  There were
> (I
> > believe and hope) no composites -- no huge full moons were
> artificially
> > stuck into the photos.
> >
> > For example, to me, "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico" benefits from
> the
> > increased sky contrast that AA put into the later versions of the
> photo, but
> > if that moon turns out to be artificially stuck in there -- or, for
> that
> > matter, enlarged in size or moved -- my regard for the photo and AA
> would be
> > decreased substantially.
> >
> > Part of the "straight photography" genre that I'm attempting to
> describe is,
> > I believe, that every significant element or physical object in the
> final
> > print is also on the negative and in the same physical position or
> > relationship to the other parts of the photo.  (And, I suppose, no
> one is
> > hanging a moon or flying saucer model from a fishing line in the
> scene, like
> > a low-budget Ed Wood sci-fi flick.)
> >
> > I think the way this thread started was an attempt to define or
> label a
> > category of photography.  Again, this is not saying that
> this "straight"
> > photography, if that old term is appropriate, is better or worse
> than the
> > many other categories of the medium.
> >
> > Paul
> > http://www.PaulRoark.com
> > __________________________________
> >
> >
> > Loris Medici wrote:
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: Paul Roark [mailto:paul.roark@v...]
> > > > Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2003 10:57 PM
> > > > To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
> > > > Subject: RE: [Digital BW] Re: un-altered camera image
> > > >
> > > > ...
> > > > "With Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, and a handful of
> > > > other photographers, Adams founded in the early 1930s Group
> > > > f/64, which was dedicated to straight photography as an art
> > > > form. Photography at the time was dominated by the
> > > > "pictorialists," who created staged, artificial (and now
> > > > largely forgotten) photographs that imitated the conventions
> > >
> > > Just to address the sarcasm enclosed in parenthesis: I simply
> don't
> > > beleive that Joel-Peter Witkin's (which is not the only
> photographer to
> > > present staged, artificial photographs) work will be forgotten in
> the
> > > future...
> > >
> > > > of painting. Adams was instrumental in the struggle to gain
> > > > for photography recognition as art on its own merits."
> > > > <http://www.turtlebay.org/exhibitions/anseladams/pg04.html>
> > > > ...
> > >
> > > > ...
> > > > Near the end of his life, Adams produced prints
> > > > intended to represent his life's work not just as a series of
> > > > landscape images but as a panorama of the possibilities of
> > > > the "straight," unmanipulated style to which he adhered."
> > >
> > > I don't consider AA's work unmanipulated at all. Did you see the
> > > straight print of "Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite" in his
> book "The
> > > Print"? It has nothing to do with the "finished" print presented
> few
> > > pages later. If his photographs were not manipulated the contact
> print
> > > and the enlargement of the same negative would look identical
> apart the
> > > sizing (which is impossible in the case of AA).
> > >
> > > http://www.masters-of-
> photography.com/A/adams/adams_clearing_winter_stor
> > > m_full.html (this is not the best reproduction though)
> > >
> > > > ...
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Loris.
> > >
> > >
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