The Zone System (ZS) can be an integral and important part of any digital photographer’s workflow because it allows you to plan and predict an image’s tonal values rather than letting the camera make the decision.

The computerized metering systems in modern cameras are really amazing, and a lot of the time they will give you practical exposures, but in difficult or extreme lighting situations, the scale of the subject’s brightness is simply greater than the camera’s technology can handle.

The Zone System:

• Lets you be aware of whether, or how much, the scene brightness exceeds your camera’s limits
• Lets you make an intelligent decision about how to expose when the tones/contrast in a scene are “bigger” than what your camera can capture
• Helps you avoid blown-out highlights
• Lets you know how much exposure range you need for successful HDR captures

The Zone System 101

To use the Zone System effectively in the digital world, you need to understand a few of its basic principles:

The ZS was originally conceived by Ansel Adams and fellow photo instructor Fred Archer as a tool to give photographers working with black-and-white negative film (no digital back then!) the ability to plan and control the effects of exposure and development. They created a “scale” of tones from black to white and assigned each one a number, with “I” being almost pure black and “IX” or “X” being nearly white or white.  Zone “V” is middle gray, and each “Zone” is one stop lighter or darker than its neighbor.

In the digital age, image contrast can be easily increased post-capture, but there is no practical means of reducing image contrast in a single capture. Pre-exposure can enhance shadow tonality, but this requires the ability to double-expose, and High Dynamic Range techniques (HDR) require three or more exposures for best results.

Sophisticated “evaluative” metering modes in modern cameras can handle many complicated shooting situations, but if the contrast of the scene exceeds the recording scale of the camera, something’s gotta give. This is where the ZS can help.

Step One: You Need a Reliable Hand-Held Spot Meter
A 1° measuring spot lets you measure important areas precisely and with ease.  Using a camera’s “spot” metering mode is not always practical:  the size of the spot depends on the focal length of the lens and generally requires a lot of button-pushing and pointing the camera this way and that – an exercise in frustration and wasted time.

Without a spot meter, you may know that you will lose tonality at one end of the scale or the other, but you have no way of knowing which, or by how much, at least until examining an after-the-fact histogram. By then, your scene might be gone!

Step Two: Your Spot Meter and the Zone System
By design, a spot meter will give you an exposure to make the measured area middle gray. This gray is called Zone V. If you measure snow in sun, the meter will give you the exposure to make the snow Zone V gray. If you measure a black speaker grille, it will give you the exposure to make that grille Zone V gray. If you want the snow to look white (not paper white but a very light gray) you need to PLACE it on a higher Zone. If you give one stop more than the meter says, you are placing the snow on Zone VI, two stops more than the basic meter reading places that value on Zone VII, and so on. As for the speaker grille, it is just the opposite. You would need to expose the grille two or three stops LESS than indicated in order to make it look dark. This would PLACE the grille on Zone III or II respectively. You can only PLACE one value. Everything else, then, FALLS in natural relation to the placed value.

Step Three: Know Your Limits
In order to plan a ZS approach to exposure, you need to know what tonal range your camera can and can’t handle. The composite image below shows nine images made with the Canon 5D set on MANUAL exposure. The target was a Kodak Gray Card with white and black patches that I made many years ago for testing the tonal range of slide film. I set my Pentax Digital Spot Meter to the same ISO as the camera, took a reading of the gray card and exposed according to the meter (a Zone V middle gray). I made four darker exposures one stop (Zone) apart and four lighter one stop apart.

At three stops under the Zone V exposure, I had made the gray card almost as dark as the black patch, so that told me the camera could hold some tonality for a subject on Zone II. On the bright end, the gray at two stops brighter than Zone V was still a noticeable light gray compared to the white patch, but at three stops (Zone VIII) the gray had turned as white as the white patch. That told me that my upper limit for recording highlight tonality is about Zone VII-1/2, or five and a half stops total range.

Step Four: Measure Your Subject Highlights
In general, with digital (and color transparency film), images look their best when the highlights are not blown out. If a photo opportunity is fleeting or moving, and I only have one chance for a shot, I will take a quick spot reading of an important high value, maybe a white dress or bright cloud, and give it an exposure of about 2-1/2 stops brighter than the basic meter reading (Zone V). This PLACES that dress on Zone VII-1/2.  Having already done the test above, I KNOW that it will be very bright, but not “blown out”!

With digital, there is nothing evil about some subtle bracketing, so if you have the opportunity, go ahead and give some + and – exposures. With some practice and your spot meter, though, you’ll be surprised how often you get it right the first time!  You might not need step five!

Step Five: Measure Your Subject Range
If you suspect the range of brightness in the scene is significantly beyond the range of your camera, AND you have the opportunity to make multiple exposures of a stationary subject, you can use HDR techniques. The ZS can be a big help here, too. Rather than making random plus-and-minus exposures to cover subject brightness (dynamic range), you can quickly measure exactly how much range you need to cover.

Let’s say I have a tree in the foreground in deep shade with some textured charring on its trunk. In the same composition I have bright sun glaring off some pale boulders.

With just two spot readings I can determine the range and how to deal with it. First I’d read the charred trunk. Based on my test above, I would know that if I gave it a Zone II exposure it would still have tonality.  That determines the shadow exposure. Then I’d read the bright rocks. Let’s say they measured 8-1/2 stops brighter than the trunk. That is 3 full stops brighter than what my camera can record. So I now know that AFTER my first shadow exposure, I need to make 5 or 6 more exposures each at ½ or 2/3 faster shutter speed than the exposure before, until the last exposure is at least 3 stops darker than the first. Then it’s time to let Photoshop CS5 and/or other preferred software combine the exposures.

Bottom Line: Keep in Mind that the Zone System is Not Dogma!
Its application should be considered as something deeply personal.  If you simply have a hunch that you like a certain shadow two stops darker than a basic meter reading (Zone V) rather than three, do it that way! It’s really a lot like cooking. If YOU like YOUR veggies al dente, don’t “expose” them to so much heat that they are over done!  Bon appétit!

One of the things I admired most about Ansel was his absolute commitment to sharing his passion and his craft with anyone at any level. He kept himself listed in the phone book even after he became famous and welcomed into his home any number of aspiring photographers who had worked up the courage to call him and request a brief portfolio review. Ansel was a tireless and dedicated teacher who took great joy from others’ enthusiasm for photography.

One-on-One Photography Workshop Giveaway

I would like to honor this spirit of generosity and accessibility by gifting one dedicated photographer a three-day, one-on-one workshop (a $1,650 value) at my Santa Fe studio.

Description- The session will be tailored specifically to your needs and aspirations, and we’ll use the magic and beauty of Santa Fe and surrounding areas to help you explore your passion and express your vision.

To be considered, just send me an email no later than February 27, 2012, and tell me (in 200 words or less) why you want to study with me and what you’d like to accomplish in our three days together. This is open to all formats and styles (including digital)—all I ask is a willingness to learn, explore and open your eyes to the fine art of seeing.

Travel, lodging and meals are not included, but we do have a few connections for special rates at hotels and inns in the Santa Fe area. Dates are by mutual agreement.

For more details on my workshops, please click here

To contact me by email, please click here

Looking to hearing from you!

News Flash: Experience the Leica S2 in Yosemite!

Students attending my April Ansel Adams Gallery workshop, “Ansel Adams’ Yosemite: The Art of Seeing,” will have a rare opportunity to photograph with the Leica S2, a premier medium-format digital camera that retails for approximately $28,000 and was developed exclusively for digital photography. It’s based on a totally new image sensor that gives you 37.5 million pixels to work with, all with the size and handling of 35 mm.

Interested students will have a chance to use this state-of-the-art instrument as we visit some of Ansel Adam’s favorite spots in Yosemite and learn to connect his approach and mastery with today’s tools and technologies.

If you want to take your photography to new levels, better realize your photographic vision, learn to translate the literal to the expressive and use optics and exposure to best effect, join us!

Check out the Leica S2 here

I’m happy to share with you these three “new” images, and offer them at a discounted price before they become available to galleries and the general public. For purchasing information, simply click on each photo.

Clouds and Reflections, Glacier Bay, Alaska 1988

Ansel Adams was once asked if there was any place in the world he could visit to photograph, where would it be (besides the givens of Yosemite and the Sierra)? His answer was pretty immediate: “I’d like to go back to Alaska – but Scotland was pretty good, too.” In 1988 I had the good fortune to be able to accompany my wife on (for her) a business cruise to Alaska and the Inside Passage. One of the highlights was an afternoon in Glacier Bay, hearing great chunks of ice break free from their hosts, sailing off into melting oblivion. Another amazing experience was visiting Sitka, where there seemed to be a bald eagle sitting on every tree top. Photographically, though, the massive glaciers and stillness of the bay were the visual highlights of the trip.

Dune Detail, Sunrise, Death Valley 2008

A morning trip to the dunes near Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley rarely leaves one unrewarded for the somewhat arduous trek out from the road.  Starting out at first light (so there is enough light to avoid rudely stepping on an innocent sidewinder…) it is usually no problem to get into the heart of the dunes before the sun peeks out over the crest of the Funeral Range to the east. This image was done during one of a number of workshops I have led in the Eastern Sierra and Death Valley.  Usually, I work with larger expanses of the landscape, but on this early May morning, there was nary a cloud anywhere – and I was feeling Ansel’s lament of “there’s nothing worse than a bald-headed sky.” Working with my 4×5 camera, I decided to ignore the distance and morning haze, and concentrate on smaller views of the sun just illuminating abstracts of dune forms.  I just checked my negative file, and found that this was the only image I made on the dunes on that trip – but I like it!

Rocks, Pools and Reflections, Badwater, Death Valley 2001

The quietness of Death Valley around sunrise always has an underlying tone of magic. During this late September workshop, we had just had a wonderful sunrise session at Zabriskie Point, overlooking Golden Canyon to the south and Manly Beacon to the west, with wonderful clouds adding to the occasion. When we had satisfied ourselves with that location, the morning was still too lovely to declare it time for breakfast, so we went south to Badwater.  At 282 feet below sea level, it is the lowest spot in North America, amazingly only about 85 air miles from 14,505-foot Mount Whitney to the west, the highest point in the United States outside of Alaska. The sun had not yet reached the valley floor in this spot so the view north was a wonder of quiet reflections. Sadly, this photograph can no longer be made.  A year or two later, the Park Service, in their efforts to protect the ecosystem in and around the area, built a raised dock around and over the pools, obscuring the natural lines in this image.

Each print is made personally by me according to current museum standards, signed, numbered, mounted and overmatted, and ready to frame. Image size is approximately 14 x 18, overmatted to 22 x 28.

My prints in this size normally start at $750, but I am offering these new prints for a limited time at 25% off base price, or $562.50, plus shipping.

The offer extends from now through Sunday, February 12th. You can contact me directly or use my brand-new shopping cart on the website.

I anticipate approximately two to four weeks for delivery to ensure the quality of each individual order. After this inaugural offering, print prices will return to full price.

In an earlier writing I discussed the fact that it is point of view that creates structure in a photograph, and that one’s choice of lens is after the fact and serves only to effect the most agreeable cropping. But making that choice of lens is often a lot easier said than done. Looking through a viewfinder or at the upside-down image on a groundglass, it is easy to become somewhat fixated on the subject itself, rather than the elements of the composition.

Regular use of a cut-out viewing card can do wonders for tightening up your seeing and compositional strengths. Ansel Adams was a great proponent of using a viewing card and routinely included them in workshop student packets. Completely low-tech, the “tool” is simply a card with a hole cut out in the same shape as your film / image format.

When you are standing on the spot where you plan to make your photograph, instead of looking through your camera to explore the structure of the image, hold the card up to your scene, moving it subtly left, right, up down – AND nearer to and farther away from your eye. You have what amounts to a zoom lens with infinite focal lengths from at-your-nose to full-arm’s-length away! If the card is white, the scene before you can even look like it is already mounted ready for display!  Neat?

Wait! There’s more! If the hole in the card is the same size as the format you are using, you can even tell pretty nearly just what focal length to use. If you are using a 4×5 camera and the card’s hole is about 4×5 inches, the distance away from your eye is the same as the appropriate focal length! If the card is about eight inches from your eye for the right framing, that would indicate a 210mm lens (eight inches is 203mm). If you are using a 6×7 camera and have a 6x7cm hole in your card, when the card is about six inches from your eye, that would suggest a 150mm lens!

When I’m working with my 8×10 camera, because of its weight and bulk, I don’t usually haul it around with me while I am exploring a subject. I often leave it in the truck, or parked peacefully under a tree, and instead go for a walk with my cut-out card. Once I have found my “spot” I’ll mark it with a rock or something and hop back to get the camera, already knowing pretty well what lens I am going to start with. Now, you can imagine that a card with an 8×10 hole in it would be a bit awkward – and it would be – but instead I just use my 4×5 card and double the indicated focal length.  Thus, if the card is nine inches from my eye, that would indicate the 450mm lens.

In truth, I don’t always have a card with me, but my hands are large enough to form an approximately 4×5 frame, and that works just fine.

Optical aberrations aside, short focal-length, or “wide-angle,” lenses do not distort close subjects, and long focal-length, or telephoto, lenses do not compress subject features.  What really causes these familiar effects discussed so often in popular texts is a change of perspective:  a change in the camera’s physical position relative to your subject.

When you move in close to a subject, it becomes very large in relation to its background.  So, that over-large nose you get with a wide-angle-lens portrait is because you’ve probably moved in very close to the subject in order to fill the frame, and the nose, being closest to the lens, is now very large in relation to the ears.  This is a matter of your proximity to the subject and has nothing to do with the lens itself.

When you look at a distant scene through a long focal-length, or telephoto, lens elements in the scene may appear compressed, almost right on top of each other.  Once again, this has nothing to do with the lens, but is simply a matter of the tight framing on the subject.  If you put the camera down and frame the scene just as tightly with your hands, the elements of the scene will appear as “compressed” as they did through the lens.

What about zoom lenses as opposed to fixed focal-length lenses?   Do they help make your choice easier?  Well, yes and no.  Assuming the optics are up to snuff, a zoom can provide a great deal of convenience – it’s a zillion focal-lengths in one piece of hardware.  But that convenience can lead to overly casual, rather than critical, vision.  Imagine a photographer out for a walk.  He (or she) comes across a detail or a scene that interests him. Camera goes up to eye, hand zooms lens to frame the subject, auto-focus and metering do their jobs, shutter goes click, and it’s on down the path.  Would the image have been more powerful if our photographer had moved in close to some boulder in the foreground, making it monolithic in relation to the background?  Maybe.  Or maybe backing up a bit might have let some tree branches frame the scene.

The point in all this is that to maximize the impact of a visual statement it is important to give thought to the image structure first.  Is the composition better closer in?  Farther back? Up, down left or right?

Once you pick your camera position, then choose the focal length that gives the cropping you want.  If your first guess is too tight, use a shorter lens, if it’s too loose, use a longer lens. If you don’t have a lens that is quite right, use one slightly shorter than you would like and crop. That’s the lens to use!

Let’s imagine that it is in the early 1980’s and that today’s digital technology was available then. To ponder to what degree he might have “gone digital” it should be useful to consider his nature, and his interests in technology and photography.

Even from his very early years, Ansel was fascinated by science and technology in general. But rather than being a modernist, he was very much a classicist. He never had any interest in anything that was “the rage.” He had no interest in the craze or technology of motion pictures – except when Polaroid brought out their short-lived Polavision, and that was only because it was a Polaroid product. Upon its demise he had no interest in VCRs.

He was just about 80 years old when he bought his first television, but his personal involvement with the computer age began in the early 1980’s when he began writing his autobiography on an IBM word processor. Even in his own work in photography, he never had the newest-best of anything – except when Hasselblad set him up with a new 500C camera and a few lenses. Even most of his large-format gear was a mix of old and used, but it served his purpose.

By the 1980’s, digital technology was just starting to wend its way from research labs into practical use, and he was very enthusiastic about the quality the new scanning technology was giving to the reproductions in his new books. I have no doubt that he would have marveled at what Photoshop could offer – but I also think that this excitement would have been mostly directed at making repairs to damage or defects in his film archive. He had images from Alaska where mosquitoes had gotten into his 8×10 and were neatly silhouetted by having landed on the film before exposure! And then there were all the films damaged in his 1937 darkroom fire.

Color work didn’t really interest him – most of his color imagery was either on assignment for Kodak or testing films for Polaroid. So he would have likely passed up on the pixel passion in that regard.

I think he would also very likely regard current capture technology to still fall something short of what he could do with film. I’m sure he would have a digital camera of some sort but regard it as an intriguing work-in-progress. I can easily see him using it for some portrait work but think it would be left neglected in the car if he encountered a Moonrise, Hernandez, or Clearing Winter Storm.

A single exposure on a piece of BW negative film can record a hugely greater dynamic range than current digital devices, and while HDR techniques can certainly make up for this, it requires an extra bit of techno-tinkering and doesn’t offer the tangible gratification of holding a freshly developed sheet of 8×10 or 4×5 film. There is also nothing intrinsically permanent about a digital image.

In summary, I think Ansel would love scanning and Photoshop. He would have a fairly current digital camera and enjoy the immediacy and other advantages of pixel pictures. I think he would still prefer the look of a silver print over inkjet (as I still do), and that means film. He would keep a close eye on advances and have no qualms about working in the digital world if the technology fully met his own creative standards.

Removing Artists’ Block

Golden Gate Bridge, North Tower and Rocks, 1989 On Assignment for The Bank of America

When I first moved to Carmel to work with Ansel Adams in 1974, I made several significant images within the first month or two. Then for the next five years pretty close to nothing.

After I moved to San Francisco in 1979 to open my own studio, I got an assignment to photograph in the Big Sur-Carmel area, and I made two significant photos in one day. One was only a mile south of Ansel’s house!

In 1989 I accepted a contract with a large advertising agency in San Francisco for Bank of America. Project? Shoot the Golden Gate Bridge. Well, I grew up in Sausalito, California, and it is the first town on the north side of the bridge. I NEVER had ANY desire to make an image of something so familiar (and so over-photographed) but I took the job and the incentive kicked me into making a few of my very best images.

Now, having lived in Santa Fe for over 18 years, I find I hardly ever get a camera out at home. The reality? Over-familiarity and the distractions of daily life. I still am amazed by the boggling thunderclouds that build up in the summer and fall – but I haven’t DONE anything about them in years. Errands to run, darkroom work to do, etc.

In the early 1960’s, Ansel Adams, who was born, grew up in, and was still living in San Francisco, took on an assignment that essentially was going to be Ansel Adams’ San Francisco. Always a hard worker, he took to the task with enthusiasm – but after a few months, and a few fair images, he conceded that he was too close to the subject and regretfully bowed out. Conversely, even though he maintained a house in Yosemite, and his wife and children lived there pretty much full time, Yosemite wasn’t his daily environment, and it remained easy for him to maintain his visual enthusiasm about the place.

I think the most difficult thing for any of us, whose work is in the recording and expressive interpretation of our surroundings, is to work “close to home”. I am in Dallas as I write this, and I am promising myself that I will get a camera out when I get home to Santa Fe.

Some times you just have to prime the pump.

My first assignment was to make some order out of the chaos of print boxes and equipment that were temporarily housed in the carport.  Ansel had just had some major renovations done in his work room, and everything had been moved out of the way.  What I noticed as I was sorting through prints was that Ansel had made quite a few very ordinary photographs.  I was somewhat stunned to learn that he had no illusions and no expectations that every piece of film he exposed would wind up being another one of what he fondly called his “Mona Lisas.”  As an awe-struck young photographer in the presence of “The Master,” this revelation came as an incredible relief and  released me  from the burden of expecting myself to produce only perfection.  Following Ansel’s model, it was better to experiment and try things that might work, and openly and simply respond to feelings, than to over-intellectualize when photographing.  In fact, I soon learned that one of Ansel’s favorite phrases was, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Not a day goes by, even now, that I don’t hear him reminding me of this, and it’s something I try to emphasize with my students.

After graduating from UC Berkeley in 1971, I had the good fortune to land a job as studio assistant for M. Halberstadt, the most in-demand advertising photographer in San Francisco at the time.  Hal, as he liked to be called, had been Moholy Nagy’s photo assistant at the School of Design in Chicago, and was innovative in his vision and a stickler for technical excellence.  He was also a long-time friend of Ansel Adams–they even had an assistant in common, although somewhat before my time.

In 1973, Hal retired and closed his studio, leaving me an unemployed freelancer.  I had met Ansel the year before in Yosemite, so I worked up the nerve to write and ask if he needed an assistant.  He wrote back almost by return mail, saying he didn’t need anyone at the moment, but because of my successful track record with Hal (who was known for chewing through assistants), he would be delighted to have me assist some of the numerous workshops at the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite, beginning that June.  By July 1974, I was running the darkroom for Ansel’s “Making of a Photographic Book” workshop.  A few days into the session, Ansel had his business manager pull me aside and ask if I would be interested in moving to Carmel to work full-time.  I thought about that for maybe a microsecond!