Thirty-five years after his death, Ansel Adams is still one of the most popular (and most searched) photographers. He spent a lifetime creating some of the iconic images in the history of photography primarily using an 8x10 camera and black-and-white film. He developed the Zone System with Fred Archer, wrote numerous books, vigorously corresponded with contemporary artists, and advocated for the environment through the use of photography.
But has nostalgia for the avuncular photographer led us to overrate his impact on the art and industry of photography? In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah and Allen go back in history to talk about Adams' many accomplishments, and why they think there's no possibility of overrating his skill and mark on the art form.
Thirty-five years after his death, Ansel Adams is still one of the most popular (and most searched) photographers. He spent a lifetime creating some of the iconic images in the history of photography primarily using an 8x10 camera and black-and-white film. He developed the Zone System with Fred Archer, wrote numerous books, vigorously corresponded with contemporary artists, and advocated for the environment through the use of photography.
But has nostalgia for the avuncular photographer led us to overrate his impact on the art and industry of photography? In this episode of Vision Slightly Blurred, Sarah and Allen go back in history to talk about Adams' many accomplishments, and why they think there's no possibility of overrating his skill and mark on the art form.
spk_0: 0:01
photo shelter presents a vision slightly blurred. I'm Alan verbiage. She and I'm Sarah Jacobs. Hey, Sarah, what's on your mind over there?
spk_1: 0:10
You know, I was just thinking about his Ansel Adams. Overrated for underrated.
spk_0: 0:18
You know, it's funny. I did a Google Trends search on his name and compared him to other photographers like Annie Liebowitz and found that he's still kind of the most popular name, at least by Google Search. And if that's a proxy for the general public's awareness of him, he's still kind of like the main dog and photography after all these years.
spk_1: 0:44
That's sort of amazing.
spk_0: 0:46
Born in 19 0 too. So he's 117 years old and still kind of ball in
spk_1: 0:50
Wow, and this s CEO is good.
spk_0: 0:54
It was good, and people are searching on it right on its money. I was listening to some podcast today, and people were still commenting on kind of in the same in the same vein of what would Jesus do? It is like what? What? Ansel Adams. Do you hear what he would have used a yellow filter or blackmail? How would he have, you know, done this in the dark room s Oh, I guess he's still kind of ah, top of mind for a lot of photographers. But you know, to your point, is he overrated or underrated? I started thinking under the premise of the poet Robert Frost, who, you know, he was held in a very high regard. And then there was sort of a backlash Thio, his poetry being sort of maybe a little pedantic. And then people were like, No, he's still a genius. And so we have Ansel Adams as this photographer who from almost the very start of his career in his mid he was 25 when he shot his his, uh uh monolith Ah, at Yosemite. And from there, I mean, I wouldn't say that every photo after he was 25 was a good one, but they got pretty darn good in his thirties and forties. Um, and he was known as a very technical photographer, but also obviously had a very good I. Um, he was known as a prolific writer, but you
spk_1: 2:17
read a little biography
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of Ansel Did,
spk_1: 2:19
Um yeah, it wasn't exactly a biography, but it was all of his published letters. Yes, that he wrote to his wife, his dad, his mom, all of his friends, Paul Strand, everybody that was in the art world. His good friend Cedric. Right? Um and it I mean, obviously the book gives you a really detailed account of his life And what was going through his mind? Um, even during certain shots that he was taking or just how nature made him feel. I really recommend the book. It's a great book.
spk_0: 2:53
He was known for pre visualizing his shots. From From what I've read about him, he was really into sort of the the psycho social emotional feeling of taking a photo, right? So it wasn't just like a pretty scene. It's like, But I'm in nature and it makes me feel this way. And when I capture
spk_1: 3:12
this, yes, exactly.
spk_0: 3:13
It's kind of nutty.
spk_1: 3:14
It is a little muddy, like you read his descriptions of the way that he felt when he's out there in nature, embracing nature, capturing nature. And you're like, Was this dude on drugs like what was going on? Ansel Adams was not on drugs. When I'm not playing,
spk_0: 3:32
you know, they say that he was a really kind of a wild child that maybe he had a DHD and he might have been dyslexic, Um, and that he only really completed, like eighth grade. Um, he started on a track of becoming a professional classical musician, a pianist. Andi. I've listened to some of his piano playing on YouTube, and he's actually quite good.
spk_1: 3:58
Oh, that's cool. There's recording.
spk_0: 3:59
Yeah, there's, like, these old, uh, bold old like documentaries of him in, like, the fifties and sixties. And then, you know, he's playing a little bit. Um, So you read all these letters? Do you
spk_1: 4:11
get a
spk_0: 4:11
sense that he was being overly dramatic and his writing? Or do you think, like, That's really what he was feeling? And he was being really articulate about it.
spk_1: 4:20
Um, he's really obsessed, really, really obsessed. I'd say that was the word that came to mind, mostly as I was reading it. I was like, this dude was obsessed with nature and with his work, Um, and that really comes across. And I think any obsessive artist can relate to that feeling, um, of just being so enthralled and involved with the work and with your subject. Um, that Yeah, I connected with it on that level quite a bit.
spk_0: 4:52
He was a huge nature advocate. He was arguably one of the first people that used photography for for conservation purposes, right. But I did also read that even though he did that and of course, he supported nature. That was never really it. For him, it was about taking the photos in nature, which I thought was kind of interesting. The
spk_1: 5:18
other thing
spk_0: 5:18
is he wasn't really rich during most of his life, even though he was well known from I mean, it's certainly in photography circles. He was well known in the in the late thirties. Going into the forties, he was well known as a technician because he came up with the zone system, which people still talk about today. It's not as applicable with digital photography, but certainly it influenced many, many generations of film photographers and dark room people, particularly when it came to sort of visualize ing with the end and print would look like, um so I guess from a from a technical standpoint, he certainly is not overrated. Nobody would say this guy's a fraud as a as a technical photographer,
spk_1: 6:10
that's really not
spk_0: 6:11
yeah and shooting eight by 10 film and in the darkroom, developing his own stuff. Printing a lot of his own stuff is well, so this guy was a master technician and and did Workshop Send wrote a bunch of seminal books on the zone system on the camera, on the dark room, etcetera, etcetera. Pretty interesting.
spk_1: 6:34
Totally. He also was very he was. It's weird, like he he cherished his alone time a lot, obviously being out in nature and wanting to shoot alone. And he you know, there would be months of time where he was away from his wife and his kids and all that. But he also, um, and another thing you know, he wasn't in the New York art world. He was very separate from that. And he did have a lot of feelings about that and about, you know, the curator Sze in the galleries in New York. He had a lot, a lot of opinions. Um, so he was kind of like a lone wolf, But he also wanted to correspond with a lot of photographers and befriended a lot of other photographers like Cedric right and Edward West. And I mean, he was constantly writing letters to them about his work and critiquing their work for him. I mean, there was all this correspondence about giving feedback on their work and wanting to support their work in his gallery. That was out in San Francisco,
spk_0: 7:33
right? That that that's pretty fascinating. I mean, they had the first F 64 so that was their little group of realist photographers that they started. Right? And Weston was part of that, um, kind of interesting to see how important feedback and critique was to him.
spk_1: 7:55
Yeah, that point Yeah. Total.
spk_0: 7:58
And that some of these some of these great photographers would actually write to him about his technical expertise as well. Like, uh, tell us how you did this. Yeah. You
spk_1: 8:06
know, I I mean, you don't really
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get a sense that people are doing so much of that now.
spk_1: 8:11
I know, right? Is that going down in the D EMS? I feel like it's either like, people like your literally, like your photo or they don't. And then you just have to guess. I don't know. I feel like, yeah, where discussions happening.
spk_0: 8:26
I want to go to this photo that he took in the in the Tetons of Snake River. It's one of his most famous photos. And actually, as I was researching his work, he's shot from that position many, many times, and you know a lot of his work. He goes back over and over again and toe different parts of Yosemite and different parts of the West. Um, the interesting thing about this particular shot is now, if you wanted to replicate it, you can't because trees have grown and you can't get the sort of gentle s curve that exists in his photo. He went back and he shot it in color. So a lot of people don't know that he actually did a lot of color stuff because he was under contract with with Polaroid in and Kodak. Um and so he actually shot a lot of color, never really adopted it. But he did shoot this in color, this Snake River, and it just doesn't really work.
spk_1: 9:24
Really?
spk_0: 9:24
Yeah, it doesn't have the same effect. I will say, while first of all that, the problem is when you look at Ansel stuff online, it often looks terrible because the reproductions compared to his prints are bad and the you know, scan after scan or, you know, whatever. But the color stuff just does not look very good at all. Compared to his black and white. I don't think that he really I had a good sense of color in the way that he had a good sense of tonality with with black and white. So that was super super interesting to see,
spk_1: 10:01
Like you develop. I've never actually seen any of his color were kind of think. I mean, you develop the zoning system, you're gonna be a master of black and white. I was doing and you met. You mentioned that he didn't have a lot of money, but he was working for commercial client.
spk_0: 10:17
He had a lot of commercial
spk_1: 10:18
grade. Like, who was he working for?
spk_0: 10:20
The National Park Service and P s not to be confused with Nikon Professional service is the completely different. Ah, Kodak, Zeiss, IBM a T and T. Hey, he had a ton. He was consulting to Polaroid and Hossa Blad. Uh,
spk_1: 10:35
so they were like giving him free cameras and stuff, right? Well, I think he was
spk_0: 10:39
actually getting paid because it straight. Yeah, it seems like he and you know the funny thing reading about his professional career. It's not so dissimilar from professional photographers today when you see like a Nat Geo photographer like Oh, what an idyllic life they get to go and travel the world and take this stuff. And you don't realize that they're actually making a lot of money from shooting a commercial
spk_1: 11:05
work. Yeah, that they're not publicizing.
spk_0: 11:07
Yeah, And then that they may actually be sort of struggling financially toe to pay all their bills and whatnot. And Adams was, you know, in some of his letters he complained very vociferously about not being able to pay some of the bills and always being worried about money.
spk_1: 11:24
Yeah, but also complaining about the commercial work that he did have
spk_0: 11:27
todo because it is taking a labor of his personal time, which I totally understand.
spk_1: 11:33
Yes, it's like we all can relate to that. In 2019
spk_0: 11:37
well, we'll come back to this when we when we get to the end of the podcast. But I really wonder how he would have fared kind of the digital age where he had He didn't have to spend so much time processing, you know, just be very, very interesting.
spk_1: 11:50
That's a really good point. He
spk_0: 11:53
was actually. So he was too old to be drafted for World War Two. Um, and he saw a lot of people getting involved with the war. And he had an opportunity to go to Manzanar, which is one of the internment Japanese internment camps in 1943 in 1944 and took the took his cameras over there and and shot images. It's an interesting set of work because he said that he thought that that work was the most socially important work that he did in his career like sort of bar. None compared to, you know, any of the other people photography that he did, which wasn't a lot. The man's in our photos that I looked at our kind of smiling Japanese Americans. It's kind of a weird. It's kind of a weird set of photos, to be honest, knowing that that these peace people were forcibly removed, American citizens forcibly removed from their homes and thrown into these internment camps, I did read that they would not allow him to shoot the guard towers to photograph of the guard towers. So what he did was, he said, let me photograph from the guard towers. So he's obviously much higher than anything there, which was sort of his nod and wink saying, I'm in a guard tower.
spk_1: 13:13
They're being watched
spk_0: 13:14
there, which is pretty interesting.
spk_1: 13:18
Those are actually the only prints of Angel's that I've seen. They were on display in Dallas last year at the Jewish Holocaust Museum in downtown Dallas. Wow. Yeah, and it was. It was a really wonderful exhibit, Um, and the Prince surgeon, obviously just amazing. I r remember. It's a lot of with in terms of him interacting with people. It's just a lot of tight face shots. There's not, ah, lot of interaction with families or friends interacting with one another. It's either like the guard tower or like a tight face shot, which I thought was interesting. There was another female photographer that was there, whose name I'm blanking on, and that makes me sad. But she had more of an approach where you were seeing like an interaction of the people, like her approach to the camps on the documentation of it was a lot different than Angel's, but obviously his pictures air other still amazing and good that he was there documenting that stuff. Yeah, I've never been
spk_0: 14:21
again, Kind of making the same analogy to the color photography and never been really moved by his people for Dr
spk_1: 14:26
Yeah. Yeah,
spk_0: 14:27
and his portrait. It's like I I think he makes kind of pretty typical. Mistakes were like the light source is too high. So you get really deep shadows under the eyes, I think, aesthetically just in terms of posing. He's all right. But the lighting of people isn't isn't great.
spk_1: 14:43
Totally, Yeah. Some of my his first published book was a book about House New Mexico and the Pueblo there. And I really love looking at that stuff because I've been going out to Tao since I was little and it's beautiful. It's one of the most inspiring places, and and Sell writes a lot about it. And in his book, he was kind of a part of Ah, I mean, there were a lot of artists out there, including Georgia O'Keeffe, and, you know, him and her became close friends, et cetera. Um, but so his first published book is like 13 photographs of the problem, and there's a few of the people there and, yeah, they're not super striking. Like it's not the most moving work, but yeah,
spk_0: 15:26
but to his own admission, he said, I'm not I'm not a people photographer.
spk_1: 15:29
Did he say that? Yeah. Okay. Which right makes sense? Yeah, well, I'm wearing
spk_0: 15:34
this, uh, what we call in the loan. A shirt. But what? What you'll call on the mainland the Hawaiian shirt or a camp shirt, which that's not the name. Okay, but anyway, I found out today, actually, that that Adams had a Guggenheim fellowship in 1948 that took him to Hawaii.
spk_1: 15:53
Oh,
spk_0: 15:54
um, and that the fellowship was actually to photograph every national park. Wow. And so he went out. We have to. At the time, we had to National parks, one of Holly Alcala, and one at Volcanoes National Park, which is on Hawaii Island. The Big island. Um, but he shot. He went to the botanical garden and shot a really cool photo of roots coming out. And, uh, I had never seen them before, and I thought, Wow, this is this is actually really nice photography.
spk_1: 16:25
That's awesome. That he was there and documented it.
spk_0: 16:27
Yeah, and then Apparently, he returned in 1957 to shoot for what was then Bishop National Bank and is now First Wind Bank, which is the largest bank in Hawaii. So speaking of, you know, commercial photography taking him back out there, that was kind of interesting to see. He got really far west. It wasn't just California. I mean, he was like a West photographer.
spk_1: 16:49
That's so cool. So, wait, that wasn't in color, though. I feel like you should have documented y in color. Yeah. Yeah, No. Black and white, I guess, for
spk_0: 16:59
the park Service is he was just going to go with what? What he knew.
spk_1: 17:03
Yeah. I mean, what an amazing fellowship to get, right. Like, we're just gonna, like, fund your trip to Hawaii. And you're gonna take
spk_0: 17:10
I should mention that the National Park Service has artist grants, and so you can actually get an artist grant to stay in a national park because there's usually lodges within the park for like a month. There's something and I'll pay you Stipe in to go photograph. Um, my buddy Stan Honda, who's ah, well known photo journalist. We spent his career shooting for a F p but then retired and has been doing a lot of Astro photography. He got the National Park Service is Grant and has been to, ah, few national parks photographing stars.
spk_1: 17:46
That's
spk_0: 17:46
so some of this stuff. I mean, he standing to get a Guggenheim. But the notion of photographing within a park is still something that goes on, so check it out well, but we'll put some links up to how you can do it. So speaking of environmentalism, he was aligned with the Sierra Club. He some of his advocacy was used to change minds about, uh, designating land for national parks. Um, some of which is being undone now, the current of instruction. Um, but he felt very strongly that photography could be used in a way to show the parks that wasn't, uh that wasn't just like an amusement park narrative that was very common in sort of the fifties and sixties. But the show kind of the natural beauty of the park and say that these air pristine lands and they're only pristine because we said that they would remain pristine,
spk_1: 18:43
right? Yeah, because he was shooting a lot of these lands before yet before they even were national parks, right? Yeah, Yeah,
spk_0: 18:50
which is I mean, now we're so accustomed to thinking of Yosemite and
spk_1: 18:55
yeah,
spk_0: 18:55
detail on and all these other parks, but somebody had to do it back in the day,
spk_1: 18:59
Right? We've talked about before photographers that are photographing the world in terms of trying to educate people about climate change and all that stuff. Um and you know, like obviously and so is an O. G of that. Basically, I mean, not about climate change, but just bringing awareness to the beauty of nature and that we should all appreciate it and take care of this planet. Like, Do you feel like there's anybody right now that's super popular? That would be influenced by Ansel. That's like having the same type of effect on the photo world.
spk_0: 19:35
I see a lot of photographers, especially on, like the Nat Geo side of the fence. I see a lot of photographers who are doing wildlife conservation using photos for for wildlife and polar bears and tigers and yeah, you know, white rhinos and all this kind of stuff I haven't seen as much. Um, and I'm sure they're out there, but I haven't seen a CZ many photographers using landscape photography in the way that Adams used it, where they're just saying we need to protect these lands. We need to either convert them into parks or prevent the current parks from being shrunken into two smaller parcels. Can you think of any fit? Are
spk_1: 20:22
probably the only one is Sebastian Salgado. I feel like he probably is like an equivalent, but not as not as well known. Maybe yeah, Salgado's up
spk_0: 20:33
there, I mean, but But you know Salgado. He's a Brazilian. And now, in Brazil with their prime minister, like not environmentalist, doesn't believe in it. Destroying the Amazon like very, very quickly. Um so I think that there are forces now within the political sphere that make it much harder to say that 100,000 acres of land should be designated for the people and not developed on it. Just it seems like it's ah harder thing to do then then saying we should stop poaching and we can. We can use ICO. Tourism is a wayto toe save that that revenue I don't know. It's a complicated, complicated notion. How
spk_1: 21:17
do you
spk_0: 21:18
think Ansel Adams? I mean, I hate to do the counterfactual because he's obviously not alive, and but it turns out to be an interesting mental argument. If Ansel Adams had digital photography and Photoshopped and social media, what would that be like?
spk_1: 21:39
Like if he were at Ansel Adams on Instagram? Yeah.
spk_0: 21:43
Okay. So for example, I was looking at one of his his photos today, and and I saw an earlier print. Let me pull the book.
spk_1: 21:50
Oh, yeah, Please. You have a physical. But
spk_0: 21:53
I have a physical book of Ansel Adams at 100 Rich Waas produced for his 100th birthday. And I believe it was an exhibition at SFMOMA that was sort of the the the original exhibitor of this work. But there's a print in here, and he was known often for reprinting. And he's also known for saying that there's no the older one isn't necessarily the definitive one, but he has one where thes trees that are kind of, you know, illuminated by sunlight, where the leaves are much brighter. But the way that he would do it in the dark room doesn't give him a whole lot of control over just the highlights of the leaves right. Whereas in photo shot you could easily create a luminous mask for the brightest points of the image and push those up without illuminating the background or stems or anything like that.
spk_1: 22:48
You could literally zoom in and photoshopped each leaf if you want.
spk_0: 22:51
If you wanted to. Yeah, I just think that with his sort of curiosity and his pre visualization like he could have killed photo shop, he could have just destroyed all these like Photoshopped to tour. Can you imagine how many subscribers he would have had? You
spk_1: 23:12
would have killed Flor? And like, Oh, yeah. Get out
spk_0: 23:15
of here. Learn.
spk_1: 23:17
Get out! Get out here,
spk_0: 23:18
Peter MacKinnon, get out here. It's that Ansel Adams.
spk_1: 23:21
Yeah. Really? Yeah. I'd subscribe. I'd click below and subscribe. So that
spk_0: 23:26
that that certainly from from from the knowledge, the technical knowledge that he had from dark room I just have to believe that if he was like a contemporary guy now or if he could live till he was 150 he just be killing it with the digital. All the all your comments about you know, large format eight by 10 bla bla bla aside I understand those physical differences, but I still think he would have killed it at at that photo shop as
spk_1: 23:53
far social media, you
spk_0: 23:55
know, you read all the letters. A prolific writer.
spk_1: 23:57
Yeah. Yeah.
spk_0: 23:58
What do
spk_1: 23:59
you think? Those captions would've been long? It would have been mushy and long. I'm gonna hash tags. No, I'm not saying you wouldn't use a lot of hash tags because I think you would have been against the whole, like, self promotion. Like giving into things, But he would have had some long Was she captions about how he felt when he was on top of that mountain? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
spk_0: 24:23
I would be really interested to see how he used social media platforms for the advocacy. What it be like? Hey, it's my birthday. Here's a Facebook fundraiser for the Sierra Club and tagging all these people that should be here right now checking out this sunset again. You know, because he was such an interesting dude, right? Every 10 every 10 posts on instagram would be him playing the piano. Maybe, you know, mixing it up.
spk_1: 24:52
Yeah, totally keeping people engage. Those be the videos?
spk_0: 24:56
Maybe he has a separate account for the piano playing because he could, you know.
spk_1: 25:00
Yeah, I could see it. Yeah. I mean, you play piano and you Teke landscape,
spk_0: 25:07
I felt a lot of kinship with them. Well, I mean, I'm not as good a piano player, and I'm not as good a photographer. I'm kind of like a crappy version of Ansel Adams on Don't shoot black and white.
spk_1: 25:19
Yeah, right, Right. And you're using a lot of technology.
spk_0: 25:23
They use a lot of technology,
spk_1: 25:24
which but that way, use technology, use technology, technical
spk_0: 25:28
guy. You know, he did. Ah. Later in his career, he ran into a guy named Bill Turnage who was a Yale forestry graduate. And Bill had this idea of really leveraging Ansel stuff for, for commercial purposes to get him Maur money and get him more fame. Um, And so if you've ever bought a poster of Ansel Adams, that's sort of you're seeing the effect that Bill Turnage had on Ansel Adams and one of the gigs that he got I have to believe it was through bills. Handiwork was for Dotson, which is the former company that Nissan became. But there was a an ad campaign called driver Dotson Plant a tree and the stick was If you took a test drive in a Dotson, Dotson would donate the money to plant a tree. And so there's a commercial if you go to YouTube and we'll link it on the blogger belong that photo shelter dot com. If you go to YouTube, you can watch Ansel Adams single take 32nd commercial in front of a Dotson, saying, like Dotson's of great cars. And if you test drive one, we'll plant a tree.
spk_1: 26:41
That's right. I I want you left a link, uh, for me and I watched it. I think that's the first time I've ever heard him speak before. And his voice was like We hired the night. I was like, Oh, okay,
spk_0: 26:54
it doesn't have that radio voice,
spk_1: 26:56
right? It's not like, No, not a radio voice at all. He's just
spk_0: 26:59
a San Francisco kid.
spk_1: 27:01
Yeah, exactly.
spk_0: 27:03
I mean, in some ways you would say, is this guy sell out? But
spk_1: 27:06
I don't know
spk_0: 27:06
he was. He got paid and he was finding trees true, and he was
spk_1: 27:10
selling automobiles that air using gasoline. But you know,
spk_0: 27:13
Yeah, there are no electric cars back then. So what you gonna do?
spk_1: 27:17
It's true. Oh, he would he would be today. He would do like a commercial for Tesla. You know what I mean? Totally. That would be to release him and Iwan Pff.
spk_0: 27:28
Millions of millions of followers. Yeah, I always come back to Paul Nicklin because I think Paul Nicklin is This is a good example of someone who's using photography to promote conservation is it is a very good marketer to the point of being overly aggressive sometimes. But, you know, he's got a point of view that he wants to share. And I wonder if if Ansel Adams would be kind of like Paul Nicklin if if if they're sort of the equivalent from different generations
spk_1: 27:54
really nice compliment to him.
spk_0: 27:56
To chancellor to Paul. Paul has amazing photos. Thio. I should say Paul is a very technical very, very amazing photographer and biologists. Yeah,
spk_1: 28:07
we get it on. You really like it?
spk_0: 28:09
I like it. I mean, I think sometimes he posed too much on the Nat Geo page, but, you know, But I like it was a personal account too. So it's all good. It's all good. So going back to the original question that we asked Ansel Adams. Overrated or underrated?
spk_1: 28:27
How would we even
spk_0: 28:28
say that he's overrated?
spk_1: 28:29
I know. Yeah, no, it's okay. Can I? I
spk_0: 28:32
can make I could make a quick argument. Okay. I think that the general public knows his name because of because of probably five very iconic photos. Right, there's Ah, there's always like 1/2 dome photo. There's the moonrise photo snake. The Snake River photo right. There's probably two or three more than weaken name. When I went through Ansel Adams at 100 I was looking at his work from 1920 till, you know, the well into the seventies, um, I couldn't uniformly say that every image moved me on and remember, like, they selected the images to be, ah, indicative of different points in his career,
spk_1: 29:18
right on the best
spk_0: 29:20
and the best. In some sense, I, although are arguably that they're trying to show kind of, ah, the total portfolio. So maybe they weren't the technically best, you know, he's he shot tens of thousands of eight by 10 photos and other format of photos. Is it Is he overrated to say that we'd that most of the public knows him because of five photos? Or is it just like that's just what a photographer's life is like. Steve McCurry has Afghan girl. And yeah, he's got some other photos that people know but generally is judged on Afghan girl.
spk_1: 29:56
That's true.
spk_0: 29:56
And so do we say Steve McCurry is overrated. All the minute manipulation stuff with side. Do we say that he's overrated or underrated? I'd say, like he's a pretty good photographer.
spk_1: 30:06
Yeah,
spk_0: 30:06
for what he did for his style of photography.
spk_1: 30:09
I think Ansel is, uh, popular in a similar way that Beethoven is popular, like, you know, the name, even if you're not involved in the photo industry or involved in photo. And that's what makes him not necessarily overrated, but possibly
spk_0: 30:29
overexposed. Maybe.
spk_1: 30:30
Yeah, maybe over experienced. Yeah.
spk_0: 30:32
Contends that people know him without actually knowing the work.
spk_1: 30:35
We're doing that then, eh? Yeah. No. Yeah, knowing. But, I mean, that's that's how it goes, right? Like you might know some of Beethoven's, uh, yeah, that one. But, you know, you don't know all of it.
spk_0: 30:51
Okay, So the flip question I would ask you is if Ansel Adams is the most searched photographer by Google search. I mean, who else would for the past? So I mean, it's got I mean, too, if you believe Google trends.
spk_1: 31:05
D'oh!
spk_0: 31:06
Okay, so it's It's Annie. Annie and that Ansel have been converging over time.
spk_1: 31:11
I was thinking of
spk_0: 31:12
him, and then they each have sort of blips when something historical happens. Um, I mean, can you think of anybody who's more famous than Ansel or Annie in terms of the world of photography? I mean, their niche people. Yeah. Not I don't think the general public knows a Weston or Ah, Dan Winters or
spk_1: 31:31
no. Yeah. No. You know, Ansel, you know Hansel And, you know Annie leave. Yeah. So,
spk_0: 31:41
in answer to the question, is he overrated? I'm
spk_1: 31:44
gonna go now.
spk_0: 31:45
I'm gonna go. Actually, the dude was pretty badass photographer. Technically, artistically. He spent a lot of time teaching people. He books. I mean, talk about a guy supporting the craft. Who else has done so much for photography? That's
spk_1: 32:01
yes. I'd say that combined with the love that he has for his subjects, whether it be people, even though as we discussed,
spk_0: 32:10
it's not his forte.
spk_1: 32:11
Wasn't the strongest part of his work exactly, but but the people that he photographed and just the nature that he photographed the way that he approached it with such care and love, I say not overrated, because that plays a huge part in the way that your end result looks and the way that you move through the world.
spk_0: 32:30
You can find all the links and research that we did at blawg dot photo shelter dot com. If you want to see, for example, that dots and commercial find shelter dot com and you know what, I'm going to be heading out to the Grand Teton National Park in a month with the Summit Workshop Nature Workshop. So I think I'm gonna go to Snake River and maybe do my version of that in color.
spk_1: 32:53
Would like to see that
spk_0: 32:54
maybe we'll sure next time. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time. Photo shelters. The online leader for photography websites and Workflow tools Archive. Distribute and sell your photos in a mobile friendly, responsive website. Try one free for 14 days. A photo shelter dot com slash podcast, then download one of our free educational guides at photo shelter dot com slash resource is