a thought on a. adams and drawing | tile

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it's a good thing to {blog}scroll back in time now and again and reread what all one promises the reader. as such i promised a come-back to arnold circus {in this dc theme}, and also to photographer ansel adams, whose well known natural photos i stared at in the london nmm, last december. as it happened, a video on adams' beliefs played and i set myself down, looked, and listened. much to my surprise, an inner conflict arose.

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i may have misjudged ansel adams a little as a wonder. this belief fired by my former photography teacher, i always imagined adams meticulously fiddling with his technical camera to get light, image and atmosphere right as he found himself e.g. at the bottom of a mountain. i wasn't wrong there. listening to the man's own view on things in a 1980's video played in situ, meditating on his form of art and his dedication, i think i got my imagining all wrong. 

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while i pinned down adams as a man of great skill {which he undoubtedly is}, shooting his photo as he bumped into his perfect setting, i discover he actually configured his image in his mind beforehand, then went looking for it, made the photo and brought it back to the studio, if necessary enhancing to come as close as possible to his original expectation. 

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so, in other words: not looking for {beauty in} randomness, but hunting a very specific setting. it's not that adams doesn't say interesting things, we're talking the nineteen-eighties! and here he is predicting the imminent digital printing revolution to a tee already {just look at us, home-engaging ourselves, in the image industry only thirty years onwards}. it's just that i'd figured him a different technician. as he goes on to explain how different prints of one and the same scene differ in quality and intensity because of the {dark room} performance, ...

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... he coyly admits shooting two photos of certain scenes is mandatory, 'for protection'. i can't but admit myself i feel let down, disappointed, somehow unable to shake the deflation from that point on. perhaps i need to study ansel adams again, now with my own eyes, not my former teacher's. perhaps i am no longer the girl i used to be. 

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perhaps i should just stick to this week's drawing challenge, hosted by the queen of the castle at the eisenbach~hamburg, {"the longer the title, the nobler its carrier"} ~ who's leading us to many-splendored tiles. ... these tiles in a thrift shop i fell in love with at first sight and i have as good as literally reproduced them. i did slam in an hungarian proverb for fun. watch out for its meaning. ☻