~ You don't take a photograph, you make it ~
Ansel Adams
What did he mean by that? I think he meant the photograph doesn't start or end at the click of the shutter. It starts when the photographer decides he is going to take a photograph. It could be planned weeks ahead. It could happen just as the photographer decides to press the shutter. Then the click. It doesn't end until the final print is made. I read somewhere Mr Adams might have worked on a photograph for years in the darkroom before he was happy with the final print.
What does this mean to me? I am learning as I go and the quote above is something I think about often. I think about it with the photographs I take and more and more with photographs I used to take. This photo is from a few years ago on a trip home from the Okanagan. I was alone in the car, had the camera on the front seat beside me and was thinking pictures. I took it, I liked it, thought it was ok then put it away. Tonight I opened it up and wondered what I could do to bring it to life a bit. So I spent a little time with it on the computer and came up with this.
What does this mean to you?
I just went and grabbed my Ansel Adams 'coffee table' book. Hard to imagine what Ansel would have done differently, if anything, with a computer, instead of using filtres, cropping, dodging and burning. Maybe his images would have remained identical to what he left us, because he had managed to portray and emulate what he saw in his mind's eye?
ReplyDeleteIs that not what you are doing with your camera and your computer, create the image that your mind sees or wants to see? You are creating photographs like Ansel Adams did.