Digital BW, The Print

In all fairness to Ansel, Moonrise was a single "grabshot" where he didn't  
have time to think and pre-visualize as he might have in his other work. He 
also  had to intensify the foreground of the negative to match his vision of the  
original scene, citing that Moonrise was difficult to print. He talked about 
the  e-printing his work in his later years with a bolder, deeper, darker mood 
and  higher contrast than in his earlier days. So post process "performance" 
of the  score was allowed as "post visualization" in the Zone System. Just 
think of what  would happen  if he had been forced to shoot a Jepeg of the  
scene!!
 
In a message dated 6/15/2005 9:15:01 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com writes:

Considering all the various versions of "Moonrise---" that I've seen  
(printed by AA) I'm not too sure about his unerring  pre-visualization.

Ian






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Ansel wasn't a god. He wasn't perfect, and didn't claim to be. Far from 
it. Why anyone would think he is unerring is beyond me.

Previsualization is a tool that he used to help him decide what to 
photograph, how to expose, and how to process so that he could get a 
print that he liked from a negative that could produce it. I've never 
read that there was a single best print that matched exactly a given 
previsualization. Rather, previsualization is a tool that helps you get 
a negative that you can print in a range of ways around what you 
originally previsualized.

As to the grab shot idea, I would have to say:

"chance favors the prepared mind." -- Louis Pasteur.

Adams was able to successfully make that grab shot because he had been 
using his tools of previsualization and the zone system for quite a 
while and was fully prepared for the scene around the corner. If he 
hadn't previsualized the shot, he probably wouldn't have slammed on the 
brakes and slid to a stop.

But this is conjecture. Pity we can't ask him.
--
Bruce Watson


claudej1@... wrote:

>
> In all fairness to Ansel, Moonrise was a single "grabshot" where he 
> didn't 
> have time to think and pre-visualize as he might have in his other 
> work. He
> also  had to intensify the foreground of the negative to match his 
> vision of the 
> original scene, citing that Moonrise was difficult to print. He talked 
> about
> the  e-printing his work in his later years with a bolder, deeper, 
> darker mood
> and  higher contrast than in his earlier days. So post process 
> "performance"
> of the  score was allowed as "post visualization" in the Zone System. 
> Just
> think of what  would happen  if he had been forced to shoot a Jepeg of 
> the 
> scene!!
>
> In a message dated 6/15/2005 9:15:01 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, 
> DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com writes:
>
> Considering all the various versions of "Moonrise---" that I've seen 
> (printed by AA) I'm not too sure about his unerring  pre-visualization.
>
> Ian
>