Patience (or not)

“I never know in advance what I will photograph, ... I go out into the world and hope I will come across something that imperatively interests me. I am addicted to the found object. I have no doubt that I will continue to make photographs till my last breath.”

Ansel Adams


A lot of patrons remark that I must have a lot of patience. Actually I don’t or at least I don’t think I do. I search out the wild places because of a spiritual hunger that needs the peace and tranquility they offer. Any photograph I get is an extra gift. I don’t generally lie in wait for a specific shot. I walk and look and wait for beauty to reveal herself. When I am out taking photographs I will raise the camera to my eye a hundred times without pressing the shutter. If I like what I see however, I enter a different mode. I will take 30 shots in the space of 10 minutes or less trying to get that perfect representation of what I see before me. Unlike what some say, the camera can and does lie. It darkens the darks and washes out the lights. Sometimes the camera, most frustratingly, tells the truth. Our eyes compensate, turn the pole straight even though it is leaning when it becomes two dimensional. Our eyes miss the piece of trash in the foreground, until it shows itself in the photograph. It’s not just the art of seeing that makes a good photograph. It is the art of seeing and anticipating the way the camera sees.

Sometimes I just stop though, and breathe in the air, feel the solitude.

Ansel Adams and digital

"I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practioner will again strive to comprehend and control them" (Ansel Adams, March 1981, "The Negative") Introduction, page xiii.



Would Ansel Adams have used a digital camera? I have no doubt that he would have embraced the concept. Yet many artists, patrons, and even photographers look upon digital photography as some sort of red-headed stepchild of photography. They say it is not art, that the pictures don’t last, that we are “cheating”. They think that digital photographers are corrupting the art of photography with such tools as raw processing and Photoshop.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that Ansel Adams did a great deal of modification of his images in the darkroom. Indeed, most film photographers who process their own film do a great deal of modification in the darkroom. The vast majority of digital photographers use Photoshop for the same changes that could be made in the darkroom. Yes, there are other capabilities of Photoshop that could not be done in a darkroom. But they are not push-button operations.

As for the “pictures don’t last” argument I carry two “visual aids” with me to shows. One is a color enlargement made 20 years ago. The Kodak logo, the symbol of quality in color processing at that time, is visible on the back. It had been stored in a box for the majority of those 20 years, never put in the sun. It is visibly yellowed and faded. Independent tests have shown that a pigment on archival paper ink-jet print will last 200 years with no visible fading or yellowing if stored in a box. The other one is a print that I made in my early darkroom days, when I did my darkroom printing in a walk-in closet of my apartment. It has a very visible smudge on it as a result of improper technique. Just because someone does their own darkroom processing doesn’t mean it is good and just because it is digital doesn’t mean it is bad.

So when you are walking the shows or looking in the galleries this year, please ask yourself, does it move me?, do I love it?, and even does it match the couch? Ask about the process used because you should make sure that it is done with quality but don’t turn away because it is digital.