Me and Ansel Adams

Around August 1983, I had the great opportunity to spend a day with Ansel Adams and his Wife Virginia, at their home in Carmel California. We were shooting a profile of Mr Adams, for a Disney Channel show. One of the sequences we shot of course was in his darkroom developing a print. The darkroom was right off their kitchen. I was going to shoot this scene with a red gel light for effect, and Ansel would fake developing the print because of my light. But first he had to print a real test print and large final print for the shot. I always enjoyed the following moment... Once he pulled the first test print out of the fixer solution, he walked out of the darkroom into the kitchen where Virginia and the rest of the TV crew were hanging out, casually stuck the test into the microwave oven, set the timer and chatted with everyone while the test dried. He explained this was a quick way to dry the print, so he could carefully judge the print density and could determine if the print exposure was accurate. I just loved this moment where one of the most admired photographers ever, was using the kitchen microwave... I can only imagine how many times he must have walked into that kitchen and chatted with Virginia while creating his masterpieces.

You have to know that Ansel and Virginia were the kindest people to us while we were at their home that day. Warm, friendly, talking to everyone on the crew... We didn't go out to eat lunch, Virgina made lunch for us. We all felt very welcome.

We were getting ready to do our interview, I'm nervously lighting the spot where he will sit... remember now, I'm 29 years old in '83 with limited lighting equipment and well I'll admit, less lighting experience than I now have... Ansel turns to me and asks "do you want me to get my TV glasses?" referring to his dark rim glasses he was wearing as I was worrying about reflections in his glasses. Uhh.. sure. and he returns with duplicate frames... No Lens! perfect! Turns out PBS was shooting with him a few months earlier and he got these glasses for that shoot. If you happen to see our interview on some archive Disney show, make note of the perfect lighting I accomplished without reflections in his glasses...

Another question I remember asking him once we were all sitting around after the main shooting was finished was how did he plan out his photos? What process did he use? I mean I wanted to know right from the master how could I do what he does?? I've alway loved photography, I ended up in TV but my roots and original love of photography came from my dad and our darkroom in our house where I grew up... but here I was with the photography godfather and I wanted details, step by step plan! He talked a bit about this but basically said that he would spend time on location and look and wait. You don't know what will happen, but he would put himself into situations and locations that had potential and wait. Observe what is happening around you. Be ready and when the moment happens you'll know and that's when you take the photograph.

He told me about one of his very famous photos, a self portrait of himself. Well actually it is the famous photo of his shadow on the ground of himself with his viewfinder camera and tripod. He told me he did not plan that shot at all. He was there looking for some totally other reason, but happen to look down saw the shadow, swung the camera around and with one negative took that photograph.

I don't know for sure, but I believe my brief encounter with Ansel Adams, did change me. I walked away from that day with a totally different view on what I can do as a photographer. Bring all of your tools and try to plan, but don't forget to just look around and keep your eyes open. You will know the moment when it happens.

It was April 22, 1984, we learned Mr Adams was no longer with us... I was lucky to have spent that one day with him.