visualisation

[photobackpacker]

Take the concept out of the AA mystique - don't use the P-V or V word. I look at a scene and decide what I want it to look like in the finished work. I try to accomplish that by all of the decisions that follow - lens selection, filters, exposure...... It is nothing more than setting a visual/emotive goal and striving to achieve it.

Without that goal, I am along for the ride - merely a passenger who experiences lucky images. While I am happy to have these "lucky" successes, I am frustrated at the uncertainty as to how to experience them more often.

With a goal, I experience failure and success. That stimulates the learning process and lessens the chaos of "luck". Someone said "luck favors the prepared."

If I don't stop to think "I want the sky a deep black" - I won't even think about using a #29 red filter. If I don't define the target, I won't even take a mental inventory of the tools available to me to achieve it. More importantly, I won't have the language to express the miss - let alone quantifying and qualifying the miss. This began, and remains, a conscious discipline. Overtime, I hope it will become an unconscious skill.

Obviously, this approach is heavily biased toward the shooter who has time (and the desire) to ponder all of these things. Dogma - no. Useful - yes (to me!)

[Digidurst]

With a goal, I experience failure and success. That stimulates the learning process and lessens the chaos of "luck". Someone said "luck favors the prepared."

"Chance favors the prepared mind" - Louis Pasteur

[Nathan Smith]

So, at the risk of inviting anti-Ansel scorn, does anyone actually use the Zone VI B&W viewing filter that Fred Picker recommended (and sold BTW)?

I haven't seen or used one, seemed like it might be interesting to look at though.

Nathan

[Paul Howell]

This debate has raged as long as I recall. Although I have never read or heard of Ansal Adams or Minor White ever making a negative comment about other approaches or photographers Andreas Feininger in Light and Lighting page 62 made a direct attack on the Zone System. Feininger was a photojournalist for Life and worked very much differently than Adams or White. (by the way I disagree with his assessment of the Zone System I don't think he understood it at all). In addition to practice and understanding the last remaining personal quaility needed for visualization (visualization as discussed by Adams) and the Zone or BZS is temperament. Although my background is news and military work, I did train in the Zone System which really helped me understand exposure. In my later years I am using much more medium format and 4X5, but I still have 35 years of bad habits and working slowly and methodically is not in my temperament. I still use my 4X5 like a press camera. One size does not fit all and just one approach to any creative art does not fit all. The only thing that really matters is the final print. If we all think alike and shoot alike it would really boring and we would not need this forum to streach our thinking.

Paul

Paul

Paul

[chuck94022]

The comment quoted above made me smile...

So Chuck is probably correct...

Actually, I should have put a smiley on that. I just cut and pasted from jdef's note, as a joke. Sorry!

[John Koehrer]

Visualization=gee whiz, that would make a neat picture.
Don't need to read too much into it.

[Jorge]

Jorge, I really like the way your Convento de la Santa Cruz hallway turned out - your decision to make the light progressive in the image was an excellent one. Could you describe in more detail how you metered to achieve the end result? Thanks!

Digidurst, I use the BTZS so it was a matter of adjusting the metering for the "shadows" so that it gave me a high EV value in the shadows. If I had adjusted the metering so that I got a low EV value in the shadows, I would have exposed longer and the tones in the arch would have been much higher.

[Will S]

Does anyone know when Ansel Adams started using the term "previsualization"? I ran across a usage of this term by Edward Weston in 1936. I'm guessing he got it from Adams, but maybe it was the other way around? In either case, Weston doesn't seem to have any problems with it, and that is good enough for me...

Thanks,

Will

[c6h6o3]

So, at the risk of inviting anti-Ansel scorn, does anyone actually use the Zone VI B&W viewing filter that Fred Picker recommended (and sold BTW)?

I haven't seen or used one, seemed like it might be interesting to look at though.

Nathan

I've got one lying around somewhere. You want it? That and his set of "fine reference prints" were the only things I ever bought from Zone VI which turned out to be absolutely useless.

[Nathan Smith]

I've got one lying around somewhere. You want it? That and his set of "fine reference prints" were the only things I ever bought from Zone VI which turned out to be absolutely useless.

Sure, I'd like to try it. PM'ing you now.

Thanks, Nathan