A letter to Cynthia

Cyn

I think you may be the only one I know in Kanab who can appreciate
this anecdote.

I have found that most old photographers like me have been handicapped
by being amateurs for so long.
How many of us knew that Ansel Adams dodged and burned and cropped his way from just good to excellent?
Did we know that a great deal of Adam's and Eugene Smith's art was
created when the lights were off?
In the dark room?
After the picture was taken?
Eugene often sent his employees out and about in Pittsburgh with instructions to shoot "this and that" at "this time or that time" and then he developed their images and applied HIS art in the darkroom! He was the master of chemically induced contrast.
"Dream Street" to me is the epitome of BW photo journalism excellence.

Anyway

An old friend of mine recently sent me some images. He is one of the best landscape photographers I have known but he didn't "know" back then that color prints and enlargements could be enhanced with color saturation papers and lens filters and stuff... with post processing.
He did not know that higher contrast could be accomplished with pushing and saturating with chemical paper. Or that he could "select" some areas for modification while leaving other areas alone. He still does not know that. He still does not know that the only thing that separated him from the best of the rest was his lack or processing knowledge.. not knowing how photographic enhancement worked back then. He just gave the negative to a processing service and said, "give me an 18 x 12 enlargement" and then accepted it as the best he could do.

I feel the pros of our time were playing games with us.
They were selling cameras and lens technology and ultimate composition tricks when in fact they made their art AFTER the shutter clicked.

Who would have thought?

We need to counter the objection today that "the photograph was
enhanced" with "of course it was"

Same as it ever was

A talking head,

Ron

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The art of Ansel Adams: a sample

His classic Lone Pine shot can be observed in a before and after sequence.
Actually let's look a the "after" first... the one you may be more familiar with.

Click on this image to enlarge.

Note the contrast between the snow covered Sierras and the hills in the foreground and the amazing halo of light in the meadow where the horses were grazing

Amazing image.

Now lets look at what his camera negative looked like.

The original image lacked the contrasts and was sort of bland as taken.

Also...

The "LP" on the hill was annoying so he burned it off.

The foreground hills were made blacker by increasing contrast and burning them blacker yet he wanted to bring the meadow out brighter so he dodged it in.

In other words, this photograph was enhanced... something the best of the best did but never talked about.

Think about that first before you accuse someone of enhancing their digital images like they are cheating or something.