The Print (Ansel Adams Photography, Book 3)
The Print is the third and final book in The Ansel Adams Photography Series--the seminal guides fully revised by Ansel Adams shortly before his death in 1984. The Print, now available in paperback like the other volumes in the series, belongs on every photographer's shelf. It covers the entire printmaking process, from designing and furnishing a darkroom and experimenting with your first print, to mastering advanced techniques such as developer modifications, toning, and bleaching, and burning and dodging. This thorough guide is filled with indispensable darkroom techniques and tips, and amply illustrated with photographs and technical drawings. It is an indispensable tool for mastering the complex art of photographic printmaking.
The Print (Ansel Adams Photography, Book 3) Accessories
 The Negative (Ansel Adams Photography, Book 2)
The Camera (Ansel Adams Photography, Book 1)
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs
The Ansel Adams Guide: Basic Techniques of Photography - Book 1 (Ansel Adams's Guide to the Basic Techniques of Photography)
The Ansel Adams Guide : Basic Techniques of Photography - Book 2
Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition)
Using the View Camera
Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs
Creative Nature and Outdoor Photography
Light: Science and Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting
The Print (Ansel Adams Photography, Book 3) Reviews
If you're a purist, you will love this book. If you are a pragmatist you will find ways to correlate traditional methods to digital processing and printing (even though the book does not address the topic of digital at all). but how I miss the magic. If you long for the days when photography, real photography, was black and white on film, then you will love this book. Of commercial necessity it has been years since I maintained my own darkroom and printed my own prints. This book brings it all back and in so doing opens some new creative channels in my mind as to how to get beautiful prints in the digital age. If you are serious about b/w get this book then work with your own shots and in your own workflow until you can emulate the look of this master.
The 2nd book in the series is also so very crucial because it outlines and describes his "Zone System" in great detail. Ansel Adams is the master of photography, black and white, but still photographic principles and concepts have been throughly tried and tested by him and he teaches you so much in his series starting with "The Camera" and ending up with this book which focuses more on the final piece. waste some film for crying out loud and get some awesome shots :) A must have for any avid photographer and a great shelf reference for any professional. Now go out and shoot.
These will be less and less useful, but can bring back the smell of the darkroom to your memory ;o). Even if it applies to B&W, I find that much of the content can be applied to color work if you think a bit more about it - mostly now, in the digital age with separated luminance and chrominance controls. You'll also read some good ol' kitchen recipes about developers and toning. And quite often, the principle that based the recipe can be applied to another media. In this third part of Adams' technical writings, you'll find a guide to go from what a camera recorded (it talks about a negative, but can be well applied to a digital raw file) to a fine print delivering "what you saw and felt" to the viewer. A reference, whether shooting film, digital or glass plates (and of invaluable interest for the two former).
Although these techniques are not widely applied today, with appropriate experience and thinking this knowledge can be applied and transferred to modern software like Adobe Photoshop. It can help relate modern and classic photography printing processes (traditional vs computerized). The book is excellent. This results in making reading the book at certain angles quite impossible for your eyes. One little remark would be for the publisher. The paper the book is printed is gloss with quite a high reflectance index.
Those words made me think that what is good photograph. For it is only in the print that such magnificence can be unfailingly orchestrated. In this book, Adams said Expression is more important than reality, idea more important than fact, the print more important than its subject. This book tells readers that what are good prints making techniques. The book opens with a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit brief, history of photography before getting down to explain printing techniques.The majority of the text concentrates it's efforts in educating the reader in the art of B&W photography. After reading this book you will feel like that your printing skills are very improved. The reader will see many wonderful pictures as examples, that will surely create a better impression as to what type of pictures Adams takes.
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