Visual Narration

^Streetscape: A man and his all-important Mercedes

This is the second post about the great minds on B&W photography. Today, we are looking at the ideas of Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984).

Adams was a prolific B&W photographer best known for his exceptional skills and authority on scenery of the Western United States. Through his visual interpretation of the wasteland, people have rediscovered the beauty of the landscape and the importance of nature conservation.

What is behind his landscape works is his credo in photography. He believed that great photographers were people who could reproduce his or her personal feelings about an object in its entirety, in depth and precision. These feelings, to him, were the essential, personal tastes of life. To visually reveal such tastes, the photographers are required to give devotion to his photographic gears and most lucid, perfect narration to his works.

^The Commuter: The Zone System may apply here. But the movable AE cursor of my GX200 makes exposure in difficult situtaions easier and me lazier

In this connection, Adams had inherited the concept of straight photography and invented the Zone System. While the Zone System may be less useful to digital cameras whereby the LCD screens and the flexible metering facilitate all kinds of instantaneous tricks, it is worthy of study for doing B&W works. At least, a study in the Zone System will improve our intuition in metering a scene.

Also, the ideas of Adams and straight photography are what we can ponder on and learn from his examples. Of course, we are not masters (yet) and have to start from the basics. So, whereas straight photography calls for no qualities of technique and composition, the masters were successfully in so doing because they knew well enough how to do with and then without.

That is all for today. Let's carry on this B&W topic tomorrow.