I have a few slots to fill and some folks who are flexible with the dates! We have a great time and the more the merrier! Look at the workshop website:
Photography Workshops in Italy
Pass the word around will ya?
Showing posts with label landscape photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label landscape photography. Show all posts
16 April 2013
Photography Workshop: Tuscany/Chianti!
I have a few slots to fill and some folks who are flexible with the dates! We have a great time and the more the merrier! Look at the workshop website:
Photography Workshops in Italy
Pass the word around will ya?
20 August 2011
Ansel Adams: How did he do it?
19 August 2011
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| Ansel Adams - Joshua Tree 1942 - © 2009 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust |
Ansel Adams is known for his beautiful black and white nature images and for developing photography techniques in the development process of the images.
His first camera was a Kodak No.1 Box Brownie. This camera was first rollfilm camera bearing the new brand name "Kodak", patented and introduced in 1888. It used Eastman stripping negative film. The Kodak No. 1 of 1889 resembled the Kodak, but featured a more sophisticated shutter.
I must mention however, that a good images does not come from the equipment and all the gadgets, it comes from inspiration. Photography is an art, and your images must come from within. Adams said, "The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it."
It is the camera that catches your imagination. If you do not use your imagination, you will wind up with just another photograph. Where does the word image come from? It comes from the word "imagination". Not from lens, noise levels, sharpness, color balance. Ansel Adams did not have PhotoShop to play around with.
Adams made sharp images seventy years ago without worrying about how sharp his lenses were. The lenses of the 1930's were much slower than they are today, about f/5.6. The equipment you use, only helps to get the job done faster and easier.
What did Adams do? He was eighteen years old taking a long trip into the wildreness, with a donkey, 100 pounds of gear and food, and a 30 pound sack of photographic equipment. He lugged tri-pods, camera's, and portable darkrooms.
In 1915, he used his Box Brownie
In 1916 he used a Pocket Kodak and a 4x5 view
He used a Zeiss Millifles
a 6-1/2 x 8 1/2 glass plate camera
4 x 5 camera
Hassleblands
35mm (he called miniture)
Polaroid
Adams said, "If we had very heavy cameras we simply didn't go so far or take so many pictures. Knowing what I know now, any photographer worth his salt could make some beautiful things with pinhole cameras."
He like using a large format camera 8x10. His favorite medium format camera was a 6x6. For the last 20 years of his life, he used a Hasselblad medium format, which he created the famous "Mood and Half Dome" image.
In his portrait image, he is holding a Hasselblad 500 C/M
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| Ansel Adams - Saguaro Cactus, Sunrise, Arizona 1946 |
Adams liked to control the depth of field, by adjusting the film plane and the lens, with the relationships of objects in the frame, with tilt and rise and fall movements. Doing these things, he was able to alter the perspective to what he desired, controlling rise movements or increasing depth of field by making the lens standard tilt down.
Adams tilted the lens standard of his view camera in order to extend his depth of field, close to infinity. 1) by stopping his view camera down as far as he could and 2) using the camera's movements to take advantage of the Scheimpflug theory. (shift horizontally to make perfect parallel lines)
Typical digital lenses cannot achieve the same perspective as a view camera because of the physics involved. When the film plan and the lens plane are rigid, we can have a measure of control over the depth of field and perspective, but we are limited.
You can tilt the camera, with a regular lens on it and the parallel lines converge. Threes and other elements in the frame can look like they are falling backward. This is the rise and fall movements.
You can purchase tilt lenses, but you will need to use your camera on total manual. Forget the auto focus and sensors. The tilting, stretches out the depth of field so you can frame easier without distortion.
Adams developed all his own film, using a small space in his parents home, and while in the field. He first used matte and changed to glossy paper to increase the tonal values. He spoke often about using the natural light and small apertures with long exposures. Adams also suggested to "visualize" each image before taking it. This means, taking your time, walking around looking at things from different points of view.
Adams, was a promoter of "pure photography" "Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form.' Soft focus lenses were prohibited, but in Adams earlier work of the Monolith, he used a strong red filter to create a black sky. Adams mounted a camera platform on the top of his station wagon, to get a better vantage point over the immediate foreground and a better angle for expansive backgrounds. Most of his images from 1943 forward were made from the roof of his car.
Adams developed the "zone System" of controlling and relating exposure and development, enabling photographers to creatively visualize an image and produce a photograph that matched and expressed that visualization.
Ansel Adams Technical Books:
* Making a Photograph, 1935.
* Camera and Lens: The Creative Approach, 1948. ISBN 0-8212-0716-4
* The Negative: Exposure and Development, 1948. ISBN 0-8212-0717-2
* The Print: Contact Printing and Enlarging, 1950. ISBN 0-8212-0718-0
* Natural Light Photography, 1952. ISBN 0-8212-0719-9
* Artificial Light Photography, 1956. ISBN 0-8212-0720-2
* Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, 1983. ISBN 0-8212-1750-X
* The Camera, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2184-1
* The Negative, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2186-8
* The Print, 1995. ISBN 0-8212-2187-6 (Wikipedia)
06 August 2011
Ansel Adams: Moonrise
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| This image is copyrighted and is for the sole use of viewing on this website |
6 August 2011
Moonrise, Hernadez, New Mexico - Was one of his most famous. The ititial publication of Moonrise was in U.S. Camera 1943 annual. For nearly 40 years, Adams re-interpreted the image using the latest darkroom equipment at his disposal, making over 1,300 unique prints, mostly in 16" x 20" format. Many of the prints were made in the 1970's giving him more freedom from the commercial projects that seemed to blog him down. He took this shot after the sun had gone down and the light on the crosses were rapidly fading and he could not find his exposure meter. He remembered the luminance of the moon, and used it to calculate the proper exposure. The exposure was underexposed, and the highlights in the clouds were quite dense. He found the negative difficult to print. The total value of this print exceeds 25,000.00 with the highest price for a singe print reached $609,600 at an auction in NY in 2006. He made this image on November 1, 1941.
Some of Adams images are owned by the U.S. Government because he worked for the Department of the Interior. However, it was his day off when he took Moonrise, so he had full ownership of the negative.
04 August 2011
Ansel Adams
4th August 2011
Ansel Adams a Biography
Ansel Adams has been the environmental legendary photographer who captured Americas beauty through the lens. He is known for his black and white photographs that resound with shadows and light. In my opinion, he has been one of the best photographers in our American history.
He was born in San Francisco on February 20, 1902 and passed on in April 22, 1984. He was a traveler and environmentalist who had a keen passion for nature. It is assumed that Ansel Adams suffered from dylexia, because he had problems fitting in at school. Some others feel that he may have had ADHA, hyperactive disorder. His father decided to tutor him at home, and earned a diploma completing the 8th grade from Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private School.
He would wolk in nature in his childhood in the wilds near the Golden gate bridge or hiking the dunes along Lobos Creek and off to Bakers Beach. Later in life, he set out through America.
At twelve years old, Ansel Adams taught himself to play the piano and became his primary occupation. It could be that the training and discipline required to learn the piano influenced his view of photography.
His first camera was the Kodak No. 1 Box Brownie that his parents bought him. He would take the camera with him during his hikes and spent the first four summers from 1919, in Yosemite Valley as the "keeper" of the Sierra Clubs, LeConte Memorial Lodge.
The Sierra Club contributed to Ansel Adams success as a photographer because he first published photographs and writings in the club's 1922 Bulletin, and in 1928 he had his first one man exhibition in San Francisco.
in the late 1920's, the Sierra Club would offer month long trips in the Sierra Nevada, where the participants hiked each day to a new campsite, using mules, packers, and cooks. Adams, was the photographer of the outings and he soon realized that he could earn enough money to survive. By 1934, Adams was elected to the club's board of directors and was already established as both artist and director of the Sierra Nevada.
Ansel Adams met photographer, Paul Strand in the 1930's and influenced his work from "pictorial style" to "straight photography", using the clarity of the lens. Adams developed the development techniques of "burning" and "dodging" as well as the "zone system" to adjust the tonality of the images. In 1952 Adams was one of the founders of the magazine Aperture, which was intended as a serious journal of photography showcasing its best practitioners and newest innovations.
Although Adams was gaining in popularity, in the 1930's he still seemed to have difficulty with financial pressures. He was busy, as a commercial photographer, but the clients took control. He worked for National Park Service, Kodak, Zeiss, IBM, AT&T, Life, Fortune and the Arizona Highways magazines, shooting portraits to catalogues. He was loosing his track in photography because he was swamped with commercial work for practical reasons.
Adams was good with technical matters in photography as consulted companies like Weston and Strand, Polaroid, and Hasselbland. Ansel Adams was a activist of the cause of the wilderness and environment. Adams images became an icon of wild America. His images are no "realistic" of nature, but they have an intensification and purification of the experience of natural beauty. (Ansel Adams)
His compelling images came from inspiration!
Related Articles:
Henri Cartie'r-Bresson (article)
Henri Cartie'r Bresson (Images)
24 July 2011
What is the Best Time for Taking Images?
24 July 2011
Photographers refer to the best times as “the golden hour”. This refers to the first and last hour of sunlight. Some call it the “magic hour” and others simple call it the “best hours”.
This is for outdoor photography, documentary, travel, nature, people and culture, architecture, and panoramas.
Why is this so?
Because the quality of light, color and the special “glow” you see at that time of the day. Most of the time, the advantage is that you will not get overexposure's with your shots! The colors are not drained, or washy as in high noon image taking.
shadows compared to the shots taken when the sun is at its full height.
The sun is in its lowest position, so the shadows become more pronounced with a warm soft glow. At these times, you will think that you will not be able to capture any better shot that what you see, but if you are patient, you will have plenty of time to capture the soft glow, as the sun rises or sets. The light changes quickly and will fade into the night.
For sunsets, I have found that waiting until that last moment, is when I capture the best images.
Camera settings
1) Experiment with your settings. Switch off that Auto Mode!
2) Turn off the auto white balance and adjust manually the white balance to your desired mood.
3) Slow down the shutter speed a bit.
4) Bring a tripod with you when taking shots during the Golden Hour is important to avoid camera shock.
Check the Weather
You must always check the time of sunrise or sunset in your local area. Never assume. Always check for the weather forecast. If it’s too cloudy or it will rain, then there’s no point going out. Try again tomorrow.
Related lessons:
Shutter Speed Basics
Bracketing
Depth of Field
Focused Bracketing or Photo Stacking
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