Ansel Adams in colour .......

[Peter Black]

Amazon UK have just emailed me with an offer of 39% off this new book. Now I don't know if that means new to the UK, the world or just Amazon, but checking this forum back to April doesn't get a hit for this book. Anybody seen/own it and is it good enough that I should set aside my b&w preferences?

[paul_c5x4]

Flicked through a copy in a local book store - The prints that I looked at were all pretty small and don't have the same impact as some of the large B&W books.

[Shawn Rahman]

One look at the book and Ansel's color work reinforced my belief that he was a superb B&W photographer.

[photomem]

I am not sure how new it is, maybe on your side of the pond. I have had a copy since about 2004 or so. Paul is right though, the prints are kinda small. If you want a copy you can get a used one off of Amazon US for 3.99 USD.

[Sirius Glass]

Kodak got AA to take color photographs. His take on color was that it was ok, but he could not do much in the custom work in the darkroom. Therefore he preferred back & white.

Steve

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

I have AA Death Valley book from 40s and color images are excellent and A3 size. Colors are far from todays colors and this is so beatiful. He was using color correction filters and the polarizer heavily and colors are so interesting. You cant be sure without being there when picture taken , death valley is so different place.
I think his BW prints were azo at this book.

Best ,

Mustafa Umut Sarac

Istanbul

[36cm2]

Do you mean this book: http://www.amazon.com/Ansel-Adams-Color/dp/0821219804 ?

If so, I recently checked it out of my local library and read it cover to cover. The gist of the book (from its author's perspective) is that Ansel was never really comfortable with color. In color's early days, he didn't feel the technology was up to snuff compared to B&W and by its latter days he seemed to be yearning to be good in color but resigned to the fact that he was better in B&W. The photographs are interesting, but definitely do not pack a full AA punch. I often found myself shaking my head and saying, "wow, that's just not that good." I did read the book cover to cover though, because it has excerpts from many letters that Ansel wrote to friends. I found them intriguing. I once heard Bruce Barnbaum note that Ansel had told him that he (Bruce) could not see in black and white and should concentrate on color. Thankfully Messr. Barnbaum did not heed that call. There is a very similar written excerpt in the book that made me wonder if Ansel pushed many young photographers toward color in his latter years. Anyway, I digress. I think your question was should I buy it. My answer would be to find it in your local library or book store and peruse it at length. But in terms of buying, in my mind, there are many more stunning publications regarding Ansel's work and his life story.

[Peter Black]

Do you mean this book: http://www.amazon.com/Ansel-Adams-Color/dp/0821219804 ?

The one I'm talking about is actually in the list below yours of what people also bought and it's this one http://www.amazon.com/Ansel-Adams-Co...ref=pd_sim_b_2

The Amazon ad says:

Product Description
Renowned as America's pre-eminent black-and-white landscape photographer, Ansel Adams began to photograph in color soon after Kodachrome film was invented in the mid 1930s. He made nearly 3,500 color photographs, a small fraction of which were published for the first time in the 1993 edition of ANSEL ADAMS IN COLOR. In this newly revised and expanded edition, 20 unpublished photographs have been added. New digital scanning and printing technologies also mean that the book now offers a more faithful representation of Adams's color photography.

I'm getting a flavour here that it would probably be the type of book I should browse in a library, but perhaps not the one to spend money on?

[36cm2]

Yeah, looks like it's the same book, just a new edition (20 new photos and maybe better reproduction throughout). I'd still browse.

[Photo Engineer]

AA did a lot of color at the request of both the National Geographic and Eastman Kodak. Kodak used his 4 photos of the Grand Tetons taken in the early moring, mid day, afternoon and evening in one of their color books to illustrate color temperature changes.

Nat Geog used his Grand Tetons years ago and in about 1990 asked Grant Haist to retrace AAs steps through the Grand Tetons and rephotograph everything using modern color film. This project was completed as to photography, but the transparencies were never processed due to Grant having a stroke. I now have those unprocessed sheets, amounting to probably over 100 4x5s. It would be interesting to compare them to AAs originals.

PE