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 01/15/2009 06:39:34 PM · #51
Originally posted by rugman1969:
I am trying to understand, how is Ansel such a great photographer when one of his photographs recently appeared on the DPC Shadows challenge, and only scored a 4.6. It sounds like this guy is only a great photographer if you know it's his photo. If you don't know it's his, he obviously isn't all that great. So, how can you say how great he is, if his photo doesn't score so well on DPC?


Michael Jordan wasn't very good at baseball.
 01/15/2009 06:40:31 PM · #52
Originally posted by rugman1969:
I am trying to understand, how is Ansel such a great photographer when one of his photographs recently appeared on the DPC Shadows challenge, and only scored a 4.6. It sounds like this guy is only a great photographer if you know it's his photo. If you don't know it's his, he obviously isn't all that great. So, how can you say how great he is, if his photo doesn't score so well on DPC?


Times change. With the equipment and techniques he had to work with you'd not see many of the shots that do well on DPC today being produced. You can't compare shots from his day and today like that.

PS: I wonder why DPC doesn't require original to always be uploaded with entries and have automatic EXIF checking just to weed out the obvious "submission errors"
 01/15/2009 06:41:34 PM · #53
you know what. you're DEAD wrong !

Originally posted by posthumous:
Apparently, Ansel Adams is the world's only photographer. Who knew?



 01/15/2009 06:42:55 PM · #54
Originally posted by Nuzzer:
Originally posted by rugman1969:
I am trying to understand, how is Ansel such a great photographer when one of his photographs recently appeared on the DPC Shadows challenge, and only scored a 4.6. It sounds like this guy is only a great photographer if you know it's his photo. If you don't know it's his, he obviously isn't all that great. So, how can you say how great he is, if his photo doesn't score so well on DPC?


Times change. With the equipment and techniques he had to work with you'd not see many of the shots that do well on DPC today being produced. You can't compare shots from his day and today like that.

PS: I wonder why DPC doesn't require original to always be uploaded with entries and have automatic EXIF checking just to weed out the obvious "submission errors"


It doesn't matter by standards. His pic scored a 4.6 on dpc. If his pictures are that great, they would stand the test of time and score at least an 8. You can't compare shots from his day you say? You are saying the shots from his day are great. You are not making any sense by saying that.
 01/15/2009 06:44:00 PM · #55
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Originally posted by rugman1969:
I am trying to understand, how is Ansel such a great photographer when one of his photographs recently appeared on the DPC Shadows challenge, and only scored a 4.6. It sounds like this guy is only a great photographer if you know it's his photo. If you don't know it's his, he obviously isn't all that great. So, how can you say how great he is, if his photo doesn't score so well on DPC?


Michael Jordan wasn't very good at baseball.


WTF? If there was a contest for not making any sense, I think you would when.
 01/15/2009 06:49:10 PM · #56
Originally posted by rugman1969:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Originally posted by rugman1969:
I am trying to understand, how is Ansel such a great photographer when one of his photographs recently appeared on the DPC Shadows challenge, and only scored a 4.6. It sounds like this guy is only a great photographer if you know it's his photo. If you don't know it's his, he obviously isn't all that great. So, how can you say how great he is, if his photo doesn't score so well on DPC?


Michael Jordan wasn't very good at baseball.


WTF? If there was a contest for not making any sense, I think you would when.


And you'd win for typos? ;)

There is no single test of greatness. If Ansel Adams does poorly on DPC it means he does poorly on DPC. It does not mean he is not a Master. Micahel Jordan was one of the best basketball players of all time. Just because he sucked at baseball does not make that any less true.

01/15/2009 06:53:36 PM · #57
he spelled WTF right - gibe hem some credit ;|


01/15/2009 06:59:06 PM · #58
Originally posted by rugman1969:
Originally posted by Nuzzer:
Originally posted by rugman1969:
I am trying to understand, how is Ansel such a great photographer when one of his photographs recently appeared on the DPC Shadows challenge, and only scored a 4.6. It sounds like this guy is only a great photographer if you know it's his photo. If you don't know it's his, he obviously isn't all that great. So, how can you say how great he is, if his photo doesn't score so well on DPC?


Times change. With the equipment and techniques he had to work with you'd not see many of the shots that do well on DPC today being produced. You can't compare shots from his day and today like that.

PS: I wonder why DPC doesn't require original to always be uploaded with entries and have automatic EXIF checking just to weed out the obvious "submission errors"


It doesn't matter by standards. His pic scored a 4.6 on dpc. If his pictures are that great, they would stand the test of time and score at least an 8. You can't compare shots from his day you say? You are saying the shots from his day are great. You are not making any sense by saying that.


I think your sample size is too small to be significant.
 01/15/2009 07:02:04 PM · #59
Originally posted by rugman1969:
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
In the first Ansel Adams challenge I took 6th with this one:



All the rest of the top 30 were landscapes, except 13th was a harbor/skyline 'scape, 14th had beached fishing boats as a subject, and 27th was a nice detail of an old adobe (?) wall. There was an actual Ansel image entered, of an adobe church in New Mexico, and it also cracked the top 10. Bear in mind that the overwhelming majority of entries WERE landscapes, so it's not surprising most of the top finishers were as well. But there is some flexibility.

The real determining factor will be (or ought to be) a very high level of skill in powerful, tonally-rich B/W processing, which is the true mark of Ansel Adams.

R.


I am trying to understand, how is Ansel such a great photographer when one of his photographs recently appeared on the DPC Shadows challenge, and only scored a 4.6. It sounds like this guy is only a great photographer if you know it's his photo. If you don't know it's his, he obviously isn't all that great. So, how can you say how great he is, if his photo doesn't score so well on DPC?
[thumb]749196[/thumb]


DPC is not the be all and end all in photography. He didn't score well because the photo was not a water drop, an overprocessed eagle,or a silhouette. We are talking about the same people that keep scoring the same type of images high over and over again. Ansel was a master of B/W photography and the dodge/burn among other things.

If you really study his photos and try to duplicate them it is no easy task.

01/15/2009 07:07:58 PM · #60
Adams also didn't take the shot to enter a shadows challenge. For anyone who doesn't believe the challenge topic is relevant, this shows otherwise. In a portrait challenge, the image probably would have scored at least 1.5 higher.

In addition, the submitted Adams photo was edited by the submitter, removing some of the tonal richness readily apparent in the original.
 01/15/2009 07:10:34 PM · #61
Shut out today at 10,000' due to blowing snow and clouds, but I enjoyed the snow shoe experience. The image below is an outtake.... not to be entered in this challenge. Beautiful snow and light. But, not good enough for this challenge. I will climb again, predawn, tomorrow to the high country for a better AA-style image.

01/15/2009 07:18:41 PM · #62
Originally posted by hahn23:
Shut out today at 10,000' due to blowing snow and clouds, but I enjoyed the snow shoe experience. The image below is an outtake.... not to be entered in this challenge. Beautiful snow and light. But, not good enough for this challenge. I will climb again, predawn, tomorrow to the high country for a better AA-style image.



While you're out there can you take a shot for me. we don't have terrain like that here.

01/15/2009 07:45:11 PM · #63
Originally posted by LVicari:
While you're out there can you take a shot for me. we don't have terrain like that here.


But you do have this.......which could be very Anselish

Originally posted by Challenge Description:

Take a photograph in the style of this famous black & white photographer.

01/15/2009 07:57:30 PM · #64
so if I entered something that was NOT a landscape or a flower, do yall think it would be voted down???
 01/15/2009 08:24:27 PM · #65
Originally posted by katiemcg:
so if I entered something that was NOT a landscape or a flower, do yall think it would be voted down???


More than likely....but who cares what the voters think. I don't.
 01/15/2009 08:24:28 PM · #66
Originally posted by dahkota:
Adams also didn't take the shot to enter a shadows challenge. For anyone who doesn't believe the challenge topic is relevant, this shows otherwise. In a portrait challenge, the image probably would have scored at least 1.5 higher.

In addition, the submitted Adams photo was edited by the submitter, removing some of the tonal richness readily apparent in the original.

I was thinking the same thing when I saw that criticism. Give me a brilliantly executed Ansel Adams negative & I could easily turn it into a smear of crap on paper with my lack of dark room skills. Likewise, if you give me a promising ursula original I can easily process the life out of it until it's been beaten mercilessly down to a good point and a half below where she could have taken it.
 01/15/2009 08:28:00 PM · #67
Besides all of this, Ansel's fame did not derive from images like that. If this image had been representative of Ansel's entire body of work, he'd be at most a footnote to photographic history. This image was done under contract to the government, it was a commercial job with a specific goal. Ansel's fame rests on his breathtaking, transcendent images of the American wilderness, and had one of THOSE, featuring strong shadows (there are plenty to choose from), been entered in this challenge it would have scored a whole heck of a lot better :-)

R.
 01/15/2009 08:29:50 PM · #68
Originally posted by vxpra:
Originally posted by katiemcg:
so if I entered something that was NOT a landscape or a flower, do yall think it would be voted down???


More than likely....but who cares what the voters think. I don't.


I'm slowly but surely getting to that point as well. I *almost* dont care what they think.
 01/15/2009 09:01:21 PM · #69
Originally posted by Bear_Music:
Besides all of this, Ansel's fame did not derive from images like that. If this image had been representative of Ansel's entire body of work, he'd be at most a footnote to photographic history. This image was done under contract to the government, it was a commercial job with a specific goal. Ansel's fame rests on his breathtaking, transcendent images of the American wilderness, and had one of THOSE, featuring strong shadows (there are plenty to choose from), been entered in this challenge it would have scored a whole heck of a lot better :-)

R.

Well said! Furthermore, AA's prints are a "far piece" from the poorly scanned, diluted, re-sized and illegally updated pixels of ne'er do wells. It should be no surprise that someone's screen capture or low res download would not have the tonal and detail depth of the original print.... which was probably a copy of a low res Internet version.

I've really been energized by the study of AA's body of work. To emulate the b&w landscape master's work is a difficult task. Brings out the best of us in the effort. Not an easy task, but a genuinely motivational challenge.
 01/15/2009 09:08:05 PM · #70
i think the man's great and all, but at the same time, i cant help but ponder if he had been overrated too.
 01/15/2009 09:55:08 PM · #71
I have decided to enter the Ansel Adams challenge. It wont be Yosemite but it will be my version of one of his other pictures. I do love black and whites and really dont want to do the glasses challenge so Ansel it is. Hahahaah.
 01/15/2009 10:04:20 PM · #72
Originally posted by crayon:
i think the man's great and all, but at the same time, i cant help but ponder if he had been overrated too.

Not over-rated, though perhaps over-publicized. However, since the poor guy's been dead for several years, that's not really entirely his fault ... also remember that he did his best to share his knowledge by publishing several books on photography, including detailed descriptions of the extensive post-processing with which he's so often associated.
 01/15/2009 10:40:08 PM · #73
Originally posted by GeneralE:
...the poor guy's been dead for several years, that's not really entirely his fault ...


April 22nd will mark the 25th anniversary of his death, actually... Doesn't feel to me like it's been that long, sigh...

R.
 01/15/2009 11:42:55 PM · #74
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Originally posted by crayon:
i think the man's great and all, but at the same time, i cant help but ponder if he had been overrated too.

Not over-rated, though perhaps over-publicized. However, since the poor guy's been dead for several years, that's not really entirely his fault ... also remember that he did his best to share his knowledge by publishing several books on photography, including detailed descriptions of the extensive post-processing with which he's so often associated.


you're right. i used the wrong word. it should have been "over publicized". thanks

p/s: i hope ken rockwell doesn't become over publicized too in 25 years time :p
 01/16/2009 05:09:56 AM · #75
Originally posted by rugman1969:
So, how can you say how great he is, if his photo doesn't score so well on DPC?


You're kidding, right?
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