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Alan Ross has earned an international reputation as a specialist
in the art of black-and-white photography: as an artist, educator
and printer. He was Ansel Adams' Photographic Assistant in
Carmel from 1974 to 1979 and was integrally involved in Adams'
books, teaching, and production of fine prints. He has been
the exclusive printer of Ansel Adams' Yosemite Special Edition
negatives for over twenty-eight years.
He operated a commercial photography studio in San Francisco
for twelve years with projects ranging from world-wide campaigns
for the Bank of America to landscape murals for the National
Park Service. He relocated to Santa Fe in 1993 to devote more
of his energies to his personal work, teaching, and assignment
work for select clients, including Boeing, Nike, IBM, and
MCI.
His photography hangs in collections and galleries throughout
the country and internationally, and he has led workshops
in locations from Yosemite to China.
In spite of his time spent with Ansel Adams and his ongoing
involvement with Adams' work, Alan considers himself something
of a Zone System heretic. It's perfectly all right to make
your own rules, and the Zone System is not the Zen System.
And neither are for everyone!
Alan regards himself as a classicist with regard to his photographic
approach, but not a purist. His work in the last twenty years
has been mostly with an 8x10 view camera but he has no philosophical
objection to a digital "point-and-shoot" camera. He has one
and likes it very much. The 8x10 is getting bigger and heavier
every day.
He used to object to being pigeonholed as a Landscape Photographer,
when the truth was that he liked photographing all sorts of
things. Since his hair started to fall out he's mellowed a
bit and he doesn't mind being called a Landscape Photographer
because he still photographs whatever he wants - it's just
that he's encountered a number of landscapes that needed photographing!
My Favorite Filter
I think the thing I like most about working in black-and-white is the fact
that it's much more an expression of how I feel about a subject than a representation
of "reality," as is so often the case with color photography. The world doesn't exist
in Black-and-White (my mother told me that...) so a B&W image is by its very nature an
abstraction of the things we see.....full
article
If you wish to visit Mr. Ross's website, please visit: http://www.alanrossphotography.com
To ask Mr. Ross a question please fill out the form below. The most
popular questions and answers will be posted on this page.
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