Brasenose College, Oxford
The thought came to me while I was photographing on vacation. It’s another version of the pre and post visualization discussion. The Pre-Visualizationists are, of course, lead by Ansel Adams with the zone system and the negative is the score band of disciples. The Post-Visualizationists all fall in line behind Jerry Uelsmann, the original collector and assembler of disparate images. They embody two very opposite ways of creating a photograph.
It used to be almost that simple in the days of the darkroom, but now, with the digital darkroom, the two old schools of photographic thought have merged. I was thinking this as I made a panoramic photograph. I saw the final image as a panoramic photograph. I captured the various elements to be assembled into a final piece of work. I did not photograph a final photograph with each exposure. I saw the final photograph, but I couldn’t make the photograph I saw in the field. I had to photograph something else to make my photograph. I know I would not have done that before the advent of digital photography because the alternative was not available.
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