Philosophy of brilliant artists dept, part 1: ansel adams

Philosophy of brilliant artists dept:

Ansel Adams was known to have said, “The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.”

This thought has always stuck with me. It’s something that when applied to the traditional dark room holds very true on many levels. I can expose two consecutive prints at the same exact settings, for the same amount of time, and still come up with two different prints. The reason? Human error (or creativity). I say human error because, if I am burning in a particular area of a print for ten seconds, I am literally holding my hand or an object over the rest of the photo to block light to it while exposing this one particular section longer. I might let light in from a slightly different angle, I might expose less of the object than I intended. I might even expose it for longer or shorter than ten seconds by an accident. That’s the human touch. I think this is harder to come by now with the digital age.

When I needed a reprint of a particular photo in the past, well I would just set up all the trays and chemicals, stick the negative back in the enlarger and re-set up and focus everything, and then if I was smart enough to write down previous exposure times and settings, I could go by those and see how it works. Of course, I am lazy, and I tend to not write down such nuances, and so I have to start the whole test strip process again, switching in and out filters, opening and closing the f-stop, etc. I could be using different paper this time, my chemicals might be brand new or nearly wasted, any number of options can cause a “performance” to be better or worse than past performances.

Of course it is possible to have varying prints in the digital age- you just play with settings in photoshop. It’s also possible to produce 25 carbon copies of the same image, and have them shoot out of the printer looking exactly alike. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. What kind of performance is that? It’s like when a popstar lip-syncs. It’s still a performance I guess, but the human element has been somewhat removed.

It’s like when performers of a concert put on a giant show, to the point when the music takes a backseat. The “score” is still there lying underneath, but the performer may feel his “score” is not up to par, and so he is trying to hide this under CGI special effects and laser light shows.

That’s not to say I don’t enjoy some heavy photoshop work- when it’s done well I definitely appreciate it- but for the most part….I think I would rather have my performances….well…performed live, acoustic, raw- without all of the bells and whistles attached.