See Like a Painter – Ansel did . . .

When I see the world around me I always imagine a camera at my eye. Most of what I see in the photographic progression is compartmentalized and colored in a way I am not able to accurately describe in words. What I end up seeing changes in my mind in some painterly sort of way. In a way it’s as if I have been given the ability to turn up the color receptors in my optic nerve. The problem has always been how do I accurately account for the colors and detail that I ‘see’ in my mind. In the past I would spend countless hours in the darkroom processing and re-processing to get the exact effect I was after. Now, instead of harsh chemicals and a glowing red light, I use software like Photoshop, Photomatix and several tools from Topaz labs. Now I am able to process for the exact scene I saw when I shot it and capture the precise feeling at that time. Each of the photos above has been processed with one or more of these tools, each in different ways in order to bring out the colors and detail the way I imagined it.

My champion, like so many other photographers before me, has always been, Ansel Adams. He too had thoughts on this process I have described. He said, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it” and “In my mind’s eye, I visualize how a particular sight and feeling will appear on a print.” What he was elucidating was that feeling that overtakes me when I begin a shoot. It is akin to an ‘out of body’ experience in that many times I am completely oblivious to everyone and everything around me except the task at hand. I wonder what Ansel would do today, with tools like Photoshop and Topaz Labs.

“When I’m ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my mind’s eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I’m interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without.”  – Ansel Adams