RMC Friday 23

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Ansel Adams

American photographer best known for his black-and-white photographs of the Yosemite National Park.

Adams's technical mastery was the stuff of legend. More than any creative photographer, before or since, he reveled in the theory and practice of the medium. He served as principal photographic consultant to Polaroid and Hasselblad. Adams developed the famous and highly complex "zone system" of controlling and relating exposure and development, enabling photographers to creatively visualize an image and produce a photograph that matched and expressed that visualization. He produced ten volumes of technical manuals on photography, which are the most influential books ever written on the subject.

Adams felt an intense commitment to promoting photography as a fine art and played a key role in the establishment of the first museum department of photography, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 

Adams was an unremitting activist for the cause of wilderness and the environment. Over the years he attended innumerable meetings and wrote thousands of letters in support of his conservation philosophy to newspaper editors, Sierra Club and Wilderness Society colleagues, government bureaucrats, and politicians. However, his great influence came from his photography. His images became the symbols, the veritable icons, of wild America.

www.anseladams.com

Laurie Campbell

He was the Scotland’s first professional wildlife photographer and is still one of the best. His work is almost exclusively in Scotland, travelling from his Borders home to all parts of the country. He began photographing the captive animals to sell black and white prints in the Edinburgh Zoo shop. He later studied photography at Napier University in Edinburgh (1977-81).

“I think that learning to identify and appreciate plants helps me better understand their significance in the landscape.” L.C.

“…mammals are particularly difficult to photograph successfully. Careful fieldcraft, and studying their behaviour patterns is the key to capturing intimate portraits of any elusive animal behaving naturally in its environment, and helps avoid wasting long hours in the field.” L.C.

“Many natural forms have an abstract beauty that only emerges when they are seen in isolation or close-up. The resulting images may occasionally baffle the viewer, but for me this is an immensely satisfying side of my work.” L.C.

http://www.lauriecampbell.com/

http://www.highlandnaturalists.com/biography/laurie-campbell

The rule of thirds

The rule of thirds is probably one of the most famous principle of composition in photography. This rule helps beginner photographers to get interesting shoot. But rules exist to be broken. To understand how to break this rule, and still get a good composition, you must know the rule properly.

If you divide your image in nine proportional parts you will found four points where you should position the focal points of interest. Some cameras have an application and you can see through your viewfinder four lines like this:

Here some pictures I did (except one) where you can appreciate the rule of thirds. 

Yosemite National Park

These are some pictures a friend of mine shooted last dicember at Yosemite National Park.

I really enjoy watching the picture of the water reflecting the landscape.
Also seeing the light given off by the snow in another picture is exciting. This pictures were shooting in raw format and they all have a postediting proccess using Adove lightroom.

More pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mydarkpassenger/sets/72157625762541747/

The ISO matter

I think the book doesn't explain ISO in a correct way. As far as I know, I learnt it in analogical Photography that ISO (Internartional Organitation for Standardization) started differencing a limited number of sensibility in the films.
That means ISO is not "real" in digital because there is no film. But the big advantage of digital is that you can change the ISO number whenever you want, however in analogical you have to finish the film you are using.

So, when the book said;

The best high-tech option (only available to digital shooters) for controlling the pictoral effects of both shutter sppeed and aperture is automated ISO selection (to date available on a limited number of professional models)

I guess it could be confuse for the readers. At least, it's for me.