I approach every print with the thought that manipulation is required. Most of the darkroom manipulation I perform is not to alter the print away from the scene I encountered, but to bring it back to the way I saw it. When I first peruse the scene, my eye/brain combination does much of the burning and dodging for me by adjusting the light intake (i.e., its aperture). This occurs automatically and extremely smoothly. I expect to be doing in the darkroom what my eyes already do for me at the scene (and perhaps a little bit more). The zone system can’t do that for me, but it can give me a negative with solid densities and ample density separations so that I can perform those darkroom manipulations and create an emotionally charged image.
Note
Most of the darkroom manipulation I perform is not to alter the print away from the scene I encountered, but to bring it back to the way I saw it
However, there are times when my manipulations are not intended to re-create the way my eyes saw the scene, but rather to alter it—and sometimes alter it greatly. This requires a vision in the field beyond the scene that I encounter. It requires me not only to recognize a good scene, but also to recognize a scene that has the potential for personal interpretation and creativity. There is no requirement in fine art to be true to the scene—only to be true to your artistic instincts and desires. The zone system can be used to make radical departures from reality. If I want to make a deep, dark forest scene glow in a dreamlike manner with high key tones (i.e., light gray and white tones throughout the image), I can use the zone system as a creative tool and expose the scene higher up on the zone scale than would be realistic. In a situation like this, the zone system is used specifically for an effect that is decidedly unrealistic, but one that may be extremely evocative and expressive. The zone system is a tool for creative expression just as much as it is for making straight prints.
I use the zone system for every one of my exposures, but I never expect a straight print to result from its use. That’s where the darkroom comes in. The darkroom (or Lightroom or Photoshop) is a tool used to mold light passing through the negative, much as a sculptor molds clay, to form the image you want. If you expect to make a straight print, why have a darkroom (or computer)? Just send it to a lab and let them do it. They’re just as good as you at making straight prints; they’ll never be as good as you at molding the light to make the statement you want to make. If your desired statement is exactly what you saw, but the camera simply can’t see it the way you saw it, you may have to manipulate it back to the way you saw it!
When I encountered the Central Arches in Wells Cathedral in 1980, I was so overwhelmed that my project of photographing English cathedrals began instantly. Known variously as the “inverted arches” or “scissors arches”, this structure was created between 1335 and 1338 as a retrofit to prevent the cathedral’s central tower from collapsing. It has stood since then.
The distant window is an extreme highlight. The upper left corner, lit from an unseen window, is a secondary highlight. Distant arches in the lower right are the deepest shadows (Figure 13-2). The contrast range exceeded 10 zones, and a 15-minute exposure increased the contrast. I exposed the highlights in the mid-teens, then drastically reduced contrast with compensating development to bring the negative into a printable range. During printing, I burned the left edge and the upper quarter (with special emphasis on the extreme upper left corner), then burned the distant window at much lower contrast to bring everything back into visibility (Figure 13-2). It requires some work, but it’s all there on the negative.
Figure 13-2. Central Arches, Wells Cathedral
Myth #2: There are 10 zones in the zone system
Photographic papers yield 10 zones, or doublings, of exposure from black to white. Negatives record far more than 10 zones, exceeding digital sensors in this respect (which is why digital photography may require multiple exposures to encompass the remarkable range of a single film exposure). Almost all panchromatic films cover 16–18 zones of brightness starting from threshold, i.e., the amount of light required to hit the negative material for it to be recorded.
Since enlarging papers yield only 10 zones of detail, most photographers think that exposing the negative beyond Zone 9 or 10 is useless. This is the heart of the myth. Since the negative accepts density increases for about 8 more zones above this false ceiling, higher zones can be brought into play whenever necessary. In fact, many people already use these zones without knowing it.
For example, suppose you have a photograph of a landscape with a big, billowing cumulous cloud. When you make a straight print, the cloud may appear as a featureless white blob. That’s because the density of the cloud on your negative is above Zone 9 or 10. So what do you do? You burn the sky and cloud, and soon the cloud begins to show good detail. You’re actually using the portion of the negative exposed above Zone 9 or 10. You’ve probably done this many times without giving any thought to it and without even being scared.
Furthermore, suppose the landscape has large areas that go completely black in your print but have detail on the negative. You can dodge those areas during the darkroom exposure, allowing you to see the detail in those dark portions of the image. Thus, by dodging the dark portions of the print (i.e., the thinner portions of the negative) and burning the bright portions of the print (i.e., the denser portions of the negative), you obtain visible detail from a negative that has a substantial number of zones.
Take another example: Suppose you walk into an old, abandoned mining shack with great wood textures and shapes inside. There’s a window that opens to a sunlit landscape. You expose the negative to get ample density for the interior, but the exterior is extremely dense. So you burn the hell out of the window, which gives you detail on the landscape beyond. Of course, you may get a black halo on the window frame if the burning overlaps it, or a white halo at the edge of the window if the burning doesn’t go right up to it. You can avoid this by reducing contrast in negative development. The point in this example is that by burning the window area, you add detail by using a portion of the negative with a density above Zone 9 or 10! And it didn’t even faze you!
So, negatives contain very useful information above Zone 9 or 10. You may need some burning to access it, but you can get it! If you can print negatives with densities above Zone 9 or 10, why shy away from purposely exposing negatives to those higher densities? I’ve been doing it for more than four decades.
In my photographs of the English cathedrals, I wanted to convey a feeling of their presence. I wanted you to see everything that I saw when I stood there. The range of brightness in many of those images exceeded 8 zones, sometimes up to 10 zones. Yet I wanted detail everywhere. I knew that if I exposed the negative at Zone 2½ or lower, I would be on the toe of the exposure/density curve—stuck with low density separations and a very flat print (tonally flat, and dimensionally flat, as well). So I generally exposed the low values at Zone 4 or Zone 5, knowing that I would reduce the contrast during negative development by giving the negative minus development. The exposed Zone 4 would develop to a lower density, perhaps Zone 3¾ or so. The exposed Zone 5 would also develop to a lower density, perhaps Zone 4½, dropping a bit more than the exposed Zone 4 during the shortened development time. But the high zones would drop dramatically in the minus development, dropping many zones below its exposed value.