Funny PPG thread

There is an amusing PPG thread going on over at the other forum, where someone has posted two very ordinary shots by Ansel Adams asking if people would have voted yes or no if they came up in the PPG voting. The funny part is how many people are saying they would have voted yes!

These are the two images:







What do you people think? I would have voted no on both of these without a second thought.

No. 1 - ...possibly?
No. 2 - No

Well at least they're not over-PP'ed like most of his stuff...

I'm afraid that it misses the point. AA produced absolutely stunning prints of a quality that is breathtaking. This is something that cannot be reproduced on a monitor and needs seeing "in the flesh" to fully appreciate.

The officially printed books are pretty good, although some of the subjects are of course quite mundane. The unofficially printed books can be good, but they are not of the same standard. The best ones are actually duotone printing.

I have seen black and white prints of the highest order, not AA as it happens, and they are so far removed from the images that we see today. The richness and depth of the blacks and the delicate transparency of the highlights make these sort of prints objects of beauty in their own right.

The two images posted above have none of these fine qualities and whatever their origins they are just really poor reproductions.

Well it's a bit of fun because it knocks AA off his pedestal a bit while making people think twice about what they summarily dismiss (or give the nod to) on PP.

Of course he was the master craftsman of photography, from thinking out the image, taking it, and realising its potential in the darkroom. I'm sure the wags over on the other forum wouldn't dispute that.

Oh, I don't doubt that they look marvelous when printed out at huge sizes. The funny part is the number of people who say they would vote yes if these images - as shown - came up for voting on PPG!

Both of these images are hotlinked from the official AA website, by the way.

I wouldn't vote for either of those images, but as John has pointed out they are not necessarily displayed at their best, I'm quite sure Ansel Adams would have worked out the best way to render an image for web display had the technology been around.

^^ John Riley is spot on.

It could be argued that none of our work on this forum is "necessarily displayed at its best" either.

So?

Coker

The "so" is that some types of work cannot be fully appreciated in the electronic medium.

Digital display has advantages too, but it's a different experience to a masterful black and white print.

Another example might be David Hockney's work - you need to be stood in front of it to appreciate the awesome scale.

Coker, one of various things which distinguished AA's work was his mastery of zones. This was a mastery which was throughout his work from camera to darkroom: the resulting prints have a marvellously rich variety of tones with a full tonal range. Screens, especially with their different calibrations, colour temparatures and so on, don't do justice to works which are meant to be seen as the finalised prints, nor do crappily saved JPGs, GIFs or PNGs. His work was good enough compositionally so that they can still look great on screen but the true interpretation of them should be as prints.

Back in the pre-digital manual age, negative, developer, darkroom and printing made a tremendous amount of difference and AA was astounding in his mastery. You are of course quite right that perhaps none of our work shows true either, and I do apologise but somehow I rather doubt that the difference between our work on screen and as printed is as nearly great as the difference on those images on screen (one of which looks very flat I have to say, perhaps the wrong grade of paper) and those images as worked on and printed with proper darkroom technique. No offence but if you havn't seen his work or are not familiar with his classic works (the negative etc) and systems (the zone system) then it's more or less futile trying to explain.

This is all very interesting discussion, but completely irrelevant the point of my post was that some people, who evidently cannot form their own opinions, claim they would vote yes on those two images if they came up in the PPG. NOT if they saw them in a frame or book or whatever.

My opinion is that both of those images, as displayed here (and on Adams' official website), kinda stink and there isn't a chance in hell anyone would vote yes if they didn't know who the photographer was. (The 1st one stinks significantly less than the 2nd one, but it still seems pretty ordinary )

I agree, the first one looks better. They don't look like some masterpieces though. I guess that when people hear that something is done by a master they think it must be great or perhaps they think that if they don't say it's great others may think that they have poor taste or sumthin.

It would have been more interesting if they hadn't said they were by AA, and only later revealed the photographer.

A little while ago someone got away with putting some Cartier-Bresson shots up on a website that went to critique, and his stuff got torn up by average photographers. Now I'm a pretty big Adams fan but I can see both sides of the discussion here - it's not how the images were meant to be viewed, but noone is going to say they're top class work.

I have the book Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs, and that is in a timeline layout, with some very poor early photos, to show his development.

As for those who judge the photo based on who took it, well that's just ridiculous. It's like another website that has 'some of our members' photography' on the homepage. I'm sure that occasionally put up really average shots for it just to see a bunch of people vote it ridiculously higfhly just because it was chosen to go on the homepage by someone else.

The first definately yes, the second definately no.

I like the contrasts and composition of the first one. Could easily imagine hanging it on a wall.
The second has poor contrast and poor composition, not an appealing image.

Tastes is not discussed is an old saying.
I would venture to say, however, that the fact that both would generally be elected by people has more to do with the author than the work. Probably the poster's point with the whole question.

Wether an AA print of either work would make it more pleasing is a mute point where the question is concerned since the gallery is electronic. However, it was well pointed the evaluation of AA's work on digital support is imcomplete.