What was I thinking when I entered “Celestial Zone System” in the “Ansel Adams” challenge?
1. Humor: Why enter a nearly all black “Zone I” photo of the night sky? It may just be my own quirky sense of humor, but I chuckle at the oddity of entering the “Ansel Adams” challenge the only a truly “black & white” photo-without-editing. The signature of Ansel Adams’ style: 1) Black & White; 2) Grand Landscapes . The night sky offers a photographer one of the purest realms for “no-editing” black & white photography, and offers one of the grandest “landscapes” available to the photographer, the vastness of the celestial skyscape.
2. Contrast: Beyond the playfulness, I consider a starscape an excellent study in the contrast of Zone I and Zone X. For the naked human eye, space does not offer much in the way of grey between the realms of Pure light (Zone X) and pure dark (Zone I). Certainly, starlight comes in the full range of light spectrum color, but across the vast distances of space starlight translates into the blend of all colors to pure white light (Zone X). These two contrasting forces are what lie at the edge of every photo we make.
3. Outside the Box: one of the qualities of Ansel Adams style I appreciate the most is his ability to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. He does this through his technical genius and his photographic eye. He allows us to step outside the box of our daily humdrum existence, into the realm of grandeur. We need only take one step out our backdoor and look up at the night sky to discover the wonder of our finitude amidst the grandeur and glory of space.
Thanks for your comments, your votes and for putting up with a DPC non-conformist. So many photos in this challenge expressed more eloquently than I could ever shoot the grandeur and genius of the Master. Meet you in the next challenge.
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Yeah thats the spirit!! Just read your comment about this and I must say...impressive! Highly respected too! That means more then just being one of a kind. Good luck with future challenges.
I went through lots of A A photos ,but I cannot remember that he did something similar to this,maybe i should check again. Otherwise it's ok, you submitted something different...and i like it.
Yes, the zone system seems to break down when shooting points of light on a black background. (Even knowing that's the point doesn't improve the photo.)
Revisiting and explaining my lower scores - I hope to be helpful, not insulting.
I only rated this a 4 because I really can't decide what you are up to. If this is a remake of an obscure AA print, I apologize for not understanding. You are very correct that there are excellent examples of most of the zones in the different stars, and I see that, but the photo holds absolutely no interest for me. There are no compositional features, no leading lines, no shapes, and no textures, all of which I regard to be crucial to a good black and white photo. So, if you mean this humorously and I missed it, I am sorry.
Its nice that your camera picks up clean star images, but c'mon, you could have submitted anything else in black and white, and it would have been closer to something Ansel Adams would have done.
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