Sunday, December 27, 2009

Ansel Adams - in Color

One of my Christmas presents from Wenderina this year was the book "Ansel Adams in Color". It is an amazing collection of some of the color Kodachrome photogrpahy that Ansel Adams had done. I knew he had played a little with color and had a few Dye Transfer prints done, but had chosen to continue his black and white work because he felt color to be limiting in tonal range (at least when printed from transparencies) and frustrating. What I did not know was that Adams had produced nearly 3500 Kodachromes in his experimentation and personal work. The majority of these have not been seen at all. Photographer Harry Callahan lovingly assembled the images included in this wonderful book. After viewing the book I am blown away once again by Ansel Adams. His work in color has much of the same subtle and luminous quality of his black and white work. He was truly ahead of his time. The quality of his images mostly taken from 1948-1950 is as good as or superior to the work being produced today's current generation of photographers with their vast collection of color capture and editing tools.
I recommend this book to any fan of Ansel Adams' photography.

Keep Makin Art!
Carl

2 comments:

JeannetteLS said...

Cool. I have TWO friends who love Ansel Adams, so this would be a perfect gift for them. Thanks for telling us.

Carl said...

Hi Jeannette - The book is awesome. I can't even imagin where Ansel Adams could have taken things had he lived a few years longer. With all the technology available today it makes his body of work even more impressive considering some of the tools he had to work with.

Carl