Timmers Loc: San Antonio Texas.

Well Bipod there is no dough that you have very clear ideas about all of this. Unfortunately there are things here that will never hold up to the light of day.

The rather ill informed statement at the end of your writing sates a clear falsehood. Adams was clear and quite correct to state in his day that with photographic (B&W) films that one should "expose for the shadows and develop for the high lights". Of this statement Adams is quite correct. Counter to this was Mortenson's statement that one should "expose for the highlights and let the shadows take care of themselves". Now even though Mortenson's statement is out of the context in which it was made, clearly it does not follow the general technical construct of most any film system then in use (B&W film of the era).

Yet Mortensons assertion when applied to digital technology is the correct and proper path to follow, while exposing for shadows will get you nothing but flawed results by digital standards. So asserting to the crowd that Mortenson is nothing but flawed thinking is at best completely in error.

In addition your dragging in the Gernsheim's and Newhall's is pretty suspect. Yes they were friends and tended to be in the modernist camp, a camp that I tend to enjoy. Yet this entire presentation turns a blind eye to much of the goings on in the evolution of photography.

Stieglitz began from the position of champion of what is The Pictorials Movement, a part of the Arts and Crafts Movement of American branding. The Camera Clubs of America grew strong after WW I and played through to the present day. One of the prominent members of the Pastoralist Movement was non other than Edward Weston. Stieglitz was awakened after WW I to the radical shift that European art took and he denounced the pictorials stand, dismissing it as antiquated fuzzy thinking and began showing in Gallery 291 in New York many of the modernists of Europe.

A little later guy Edward Weston was exposed to the Modern Art Movement by a woman painter he was having an affair with, refused his appointment to the Linked Ring (ultra old school/pictorialist styling), scraped the emulsion from his glass plate negatives, embraced the realism of photography, abandoned his then mistress, dumped his wife and six children, hooked up with Tina Modotti and scaddle off to Mexico to join the Mexican Revolution and Communism (Tina Modotti).

A.D, Colman is a truly gifted historian for photography, his books such as Light Readings and others should be looked at by any serious photographer wanting to know about the history of photography.

Now our boy Gernsheim, there is a myopic charlatan. He knew clearly that some 8 to 15 years prior to his stated invention of photography given to Nicephore Niepce was predated by dozens of 'Naturalist' clergymen of England where they used methods of creating permanent images through the solar microscope of their time. Its even in his collection held by The University of Texas at Austin. His total failure as a researcher and knolagable practisoner of the photographic processes is revealed by the exquisite Pin Hole images done in the 1850-90's by European 'armature' photographers who used Cyanotype Process to make printed images on fine art papers that rival the work being done with Platinum and Palladium. Consider now to be some how a lost technique, it is simply that these workers would remove the print to a dark storage for a day or so then 'develop' the image by a simple room temperature water bath, thus rendering a perfect long tonal ranged image. No, our boy Gernsheim is but a shallow fool who understood nothing of what he had, at best a greedy collector.

The Newhall's, he was gay and so got dismissed from the Print Collection of The Museum of Modern Art after a silly scandal. Adams who was a bit foolish in his public standing was never discovered as gay but was found to have leftist leaning when that was not kosher. Nancy, the one with the eyes and brains helped Ansel become a known talent in the public eye was an alcoholic who died on the Sake River when on a 'boating' excursion with husband Beaumont and Adams. Seems the tree the raft was tied to decided to fall and landed on the passed out Nancy resting on the raft while Ansel and Beaumont were setting up camp for the evening!

The referenced article is filled with semi dirty laundry it is true, but the meat and potatoes of a historic nature are so lacking. For a correct grasp of all the fun and frolic that was going on in the then emerging art form called photography.

All that said, do yourself a great service, read A.D. Coleman, he is actual fun to read. Look at the US Camera Clubs, look at pictorialism, there is a wonderful big book by that name some 20 years hence. Get it from the public library, or you can actual get it from many university libraries, they do serve the community.

Watch out for these silly info story telling articles, they are froth with just plane idiocy, the laddeled with a smidgen of truth.

Bipod

OK, you convinced me, Timmers:

* William Mortenson is a great photographer

* Edward Weston is bad photographer

* Weston's pre-WW I work as a pictorialist is better than his later work.

* Beaumont Newhalll is a bad historian

Everyone would realize these Great Truths if it weren't for the suspect "Modern Camp" made up of
"myopic charlatans" "dragging in" irrelvances (like, um, merit) .

No doubt it was due to the machinations of these fringe modernists that Beaumont Newhall obtained
teaching positions at University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, State University of
New York at Buffalo and at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies in Austria.

Partisanship also explains Newhall's hiring by MOMA, then as curator of the George Eastman House
museum, and finally his appointment as full professor at the University of New Mexico in 1972.

BTW, I don't see how Edward Weston's lovelife is relevant to this discussion. But to set the record stratight:
his eldest son Edward Chandler Weston travelled with him and Tina Modotti to Mexico.. And there are
two sides to every marriage. Modetti's biographer, Letizia Argenteri, describes Edward Weston's
first wife, Flora--a grade school teacher in Tropico, CA, and relative of the wealthy Chandler family--
as a "homely, rigid Puritan, and an utterly conventional woman, with whom he had little in common
since he abhorred conventions."

I agree that Paul Strand was a major influence on Alfred Steiglitz. He exhibited Strand's work in a
one-man show at Gallery 291 in 1916, (He had stopped showing photographs at the gallery, but made
an exception for Strand.) The relationship photography and the other visual arts is complex.

Modern art was the focus at Gallery 291 and certainly would have eventually doomed pictorialism,
but it didn't have that effect at first. Cubist drawings by Pablo Picasso were reproduced in a Camea Work
special number in 1913--and the immediate reponse was a spate of Cubist pictorialist photographs!

But straight photography arrives with a bang in issue #48 in 1916, in the form of six photographs by
Paul Strand. Strand seems to realized immediately that copying the look of modern art completely
misses the point of modernism. On the other hand, Edward Hopper is often mentioned as an influence
on Strand's early work, such as famous "Wall Street" (which appearsd in Camera work #49 in 1917).

But getting back to Mortonsen.....Maybe, Timmers, you could kindly point me to one photograph by
William Mortonsen that isn't either kitsch or software S&M?

It seems to be me that if one wants technical advice from a film photographer, there are much better
sources than WIlliam Mortonsen (unless one is planning a career as a pictorialist a pornographer.)
For example, not only are Adam's photographs vastly superior in style and conception, but they are
technically superior, and Adam's has a much better understanding of the science of the darkroom,
as well as being a much clearer writer.

Timmers Loc: San Antonio Texas.

Your ever so correct about all things of modern art and I just don't have an interest in responding to this long list of subjects that you are so aggressively presenting. Mellow out and then look over this long list of subjects and then post back about some specific subject that you want to discuss.

If this is to be taken as my trying to duck and run then it is fine by me. Having someone yell at me on the internet is just way to boring. There are many stories and subjects that can be brought up and looked at on a discussion forum that can help inform other readers.

But you choose a subject that you would like to look into as a discussion and I'm there. But I'm not into this yelling at myself or others to get a point across, frankly it is bad form and smacks of bulling.

Bipod

OK, how about Diane Arbus?

It's interesting to contrast William Mortonsen with Diane Arbus--who also chose grotesque subjects,
but didn't use crontrived props or sets, retouch her negatives, or hand-tint her prints.

Arbus's work--while rarely comfrotable viewing--is generally regarded as important photography.
This followng link contains dozens of quotes from critics and reviewers, all but one positive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Arbus#Critical_reception
The main dissenting voice seems to be Susan Sontag.

Even if one accepts Sontag's view (and I do not) that Arbus's work is a "freak show"--the freaks are real.
In Mortonsen's work, it's models and actors made to look like freaks, then spiced up with softcore S&M
props and poses.

Both Arbus and Mortonsen are relevant today because one effect of shocking subject matter is to grab
the viewer's attention. This does not seem to be Arbus's intention, but it is Mortonsen's (certainly in
his work for Hollywood). Today very sophisticated techniques are employed in advertising images to do
the same thing--but with an (ordinary) product or service as the main subject.

With digital photography, it is much easier to alter images than in Mortonsen's day: to produce hyper-
saturated colors, distorted human figures, montages, etc. We are inundated by advertising iimages of
preternaturally delicious-looking food, cuter-than-cute animals, thinner-than-thin models. The line
between paid-advertising images and feature images in all media is today very thin. But a great deal
of amateur images also have this attention-grabbing quality.

It's not easy to photograph a shocking subject in a way that doesn't seem exploitative. But treating
attractive subjects -- cute animals, pretty flowers, colorful sunsets -- in a way that doesn't seem
shallow or attention-grabbing is equally difficult. Many of these photographs seem like a
stranger offering candy to a child -- the viewer feels manipulated and wonders if he or she is
about to be victimized. Others are like a joke: the first time you see the photo, it produces a
reaction, but the second time "you've seen that one before".

Many people today seem to think any photograph that grabs the viewer's attention is a good
photograph. Some good photographs do grab the viewers attention, but they also hold it--and can
survive repeated viewings. IMHO, most of Diane Arbus's photographs pass this test.

E.L.. Shapiro Loc: Ottawa, Ontario Canada

My goodness!

If I were a rookie photographer asking for a basic lighting scheme for "portraits" and reading all of this, by now I would have thrown my camera out of the window, taken up a different hobby or admitted myself to the local asylum for treatment.

Don't mind me, I resort to hyperbole weh I am in a jovial mood!

Imagine yourself as a guy who wants to take some nice portrait of his girlfriend or mom and y'all send him off to a Diane Arbus exhibit. Why not Mapplethorpe?

If the OP did not run off screaming...or laughing, I will provide him with a diagram.

Perhas we should start a section of "The History of Photography" including comparative analysis of the masters. Very academic! Why not?

Bipod

OK, I'll take the bait: why not Maplethorpe? He did some stunning portraits
of celebrities: Annie Lennox, Debby Harry, Susan Sontag, amd this one of
Susan Sarandon and her daughter, Eva Amurri:
https://unframed.lacma.org/sites/default/files/attachments/Sarandon_0.png

But my favorite is of Patti Smith (his girlfriend at the time)--the composition
is way better than anythnig I'd come up with:
Robert Maplethorpe, "Patti Smith"
http://static.artdiscover.com/img/artwork/1765_l.jpeg

They're all fashiony, but no more than Annie Liebovitz's or most of what one
sees these days. Maplethorpe's photos of less-famous friends and acquaintances
I suspect are his idea of a "normal portrait":

Robert Maplethorpe, "Michael Ward Stout" (founder of the law firm of Stout, Thomas
and Johnson, and executor of Mathplethorpe's estate, and now president of the Robert
Maplethorpe Foundation):
https://unframed.lacma.org/sites/default/files/attachments/Michael_Ward_Stout_1986.jpg

As for his BSDM photos, he was ahead of his time. Thanks to Malcolm McLaren and
Vivienne Westwood and others, by the end of the 1970s fetishware was ubiquitous.
Even my little 14-year-old cousins in sunny Southern Califonria were wearing spiked
belts and matching a matching doggie collar (much to their mother's consernation).
They could have walked down the street looking like Siouxsie Sioux or Soo Catwoman
and it would be just another day in the burbs.

(Photographer unknown) Siouxsie Sioux, on a London street:
https://lyriquediscorde.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/siouxsie8.jpg?w=639&h=964

There really is no such thing as a "basic portrait," except in commerce.

If someone said he wanted to paint a "basic portrait", every artist in the
room would burst out laughing. Who's "basic"? Van Dyck? Rembrandt?
Reynolds? Picasso? Warhol?

Heck, there isn't even a "basic dinner"---it sort of depends on your upbringing,
ethnicity, region and budget (except in the minds of caterers, where it means
rubbberized chicken with vegetarian aternative, rubberized tofu).

Everybody is "ethnic" -- even white Americans. Everybody is a "foriegner"
to most of the world. Everybody is product of their culture and experiences.
To sum up: How you paint (or photograph) depends on who you are. Or at
least, it should.

Which doesn't mean the sitter should be treated as a blank canvas--sitters
are not models.

And of course, any photograph must be suitable in format and style for it's
intended use--whatever that may be. But there too, standards vary. The
big question for me, when I see the ten-millionth photograph of a robin
sitting in a tree is: what purpose can this image possibly serve? It even
bores my cat.

At least portraits are of interest to the sitter, and of interest to others if the
sitter is a celebrity.

gmango85

Thank you! Yes some responses were interesting they left me scractching my head
Thanks everyone.

Timmers Loc: San Antonio Texas.

Hi there E.L.. Shapiro, please note that I pointed to the 'educational' side of William Mortenson and his basic light. It is vary basic and simple to understand and he (Mortenson) advocated it as a basic or foundational beginning to learn the most basic of studio lighting. I still think that I did answer the OP's question for help in getting started.