Ansel Adams suggested in his book „The Negative“ a plan for practice in awareness and visualization to improve skills in black and white photography (Chapter 1, p. 3). „Take nothing for granted“: Black isn’t pitch black, but consists of many dark gray values, white isn’t pure white, but consists of many light gray tones.
One of his further suggestions to improve learning visualization of a subject could be the use of Polaroid Land black-and-white films. He made this suggestion 1981, long before LCD monitor and live view. With these tools our learning curve on each subject and imaging situation is steep.
Using Slow Shutter app I’m able to compose an image in live view mode and integrate a period of time to a single image. The app tends to capture the bright whites first, and doesn’t change them very much while integrating the whole image e.g. for 8 seconds. Therefore, I start my exposure at a moment, where the bright values come close to my visualization of the composition – and then I enjoy the completion. I believe, this feeling is close to the moment, when a print came out in the darkroom.
Ansel Adams didn’t have an electronic optical system. Hisrecommendationswereaimedathavingatrainedeyeand withafewmeasuringpointsanideaof whatthe distributionofgrayvalueswould be inreality, inthe negativeandintheprint (thepositive).
Thisdistributionisnowadaysgivenbyourcamerasasa histogram. Eachpixel of a capture isincluded. Thus, the distribution of gray valuesis notestimated by some 3 to 10measurementpoints. With each pixel of a photo included and millions of them in a single capture we get a quasi-continuousfunctionfromthe lowesttothehighest brightness values: a histogram.
Let’slookatthe following photographofachessboardfromacommon gamecollection and its histogram. (The chessboard was already old and slightly bent.) The chessboard consists of mainly two gray levels: the black and the white chess fields. Each individual chess field consists of slightly differing gray levels. The two peaks in the histogram represent this inhomogeneity of the photographed „black“ and „white“ chess fields.
Departure from realism is a significant contribution to creative imagery if you know to influence your result.