© Michael Heller

A PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE

Landscapes

Ansel Adams always called the 35mm camera a "miniature camera." During the summers I spent with him in in Yosemite he would work extensively with a 4x5 view camera and use the Polaroid film back almost exclusively. We shot Polaroid P/N film, a sandwich that gave you a print and a Plus-X thin emulsion negative. We carried around containers of sodium sulfite to clear the negatives in, and later fixed and washed the film back at the Best's Studio lab. I had rigged up a backpack for my Calumet View Camera and it's heavy tripod and would hike out into the mountains with ten film holders and my spot meter to practice working with the Zone System. Adams, naturally, had an entourage of helpers to carry his gear. I don't know what happened to all those negatives I made those summers but I have somehow managed to hang on to this one 4x5 Polaroid print. It was a zone VI value exposure for skin tone. It was an exposure test done with me as the subject, by him. My very own Ansel Adams original. (Quit laughing, I like it!) The color images on this page are 35mm images that Ansel would call "miniatures".

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