Archive for June, 2009

I can’t say why, but I have always been intrigued by Zone V.

In the great old days of glorious black and white, we film photographers always knew; really intuitively knew how the scenes we see are translated into the images we capture. We know without being told how the world we see is all 3D, full colour, and rendered in a dynamic range way way beyond the 2D capacities of film; let alone the capabilities of digital. What separates a true photographer from a casual point-and-shooter is the absence of the true photographer’s interest in literalism. True photographers don’t struggle over the containment of the innumerable compromises that translate a scene into a photographic image. Their task is much more to do with artistic representation. There’s artistic expression to be explored in this journey of image making. Those sensibilities were never more obvious when the palate of choice was black and white. The photographer’s art is one of re-visualisation; of capturing the story of what we see into a medium that allows us to select and emphasise the statements we have chosen to make. It’s a very intentional process of artistic expression. And the Zone System is the finest of fine-art palates to use.

Ansel Adams was an iconic photographer for the art he produced and for the intellectual insight of his image making. He was a complete package of artistic innovation. He developed the Zone System as a system of understanding through which to explore the scenes we see and through which to render them onto film.

The basic idea is to visualise a scene across nine zones of tone. Zone I is the space for the darkest tone you might want to ascribe. Zone IX is the space you choose for the lightest tone you want to represent. Zone V is the middle tone. Zone V is the most important parameter with which to play. If the scene we see is perfectly described by a journey from pure black to blinding white, finding Zone V is a matter of measuring a reflectance of 18 per cent grey. Which means that if you meter on this exact tone in your scene, or meter directly from a calibration device, the tone you’ve ascribed to Zone V will be right in the middle of the tones your camera will portray. That’s because all camera meters are calibrated to 18 per cent grey. My first photo here is a picture of the wondrous CBL white balance – 18 per cent grey camera meter calibration device. If you meter from it, the picture you take will be arranged around a centre-tone of 18 per cent grey. That’s the tone your camera understands as Zone V.

But from here, things get more creative. You don’t have to follow the dictates of your camera exposure meter. You, the photographer can choose which bit of the scene should be rendered to become the middle tone. Using a spot meter, you can point your meter at any tone you like and tell the camera that that’s the tone you want to be Zone V. Then, all the other tones will fall in place around the choice you’ve made. If, say, you choose a blacker than 18 per cent grey tone to be your middle tone, every other tone in the scene will be scaled up to emphasise the more shadowed parts of the scene. You are choosing how dark the dark bits should be and how light the light bits will become. If you want to be literal to the scene you see, stick an 18 per cent grey card or CBL calibrator in front of your lens and meter on that.

The point is, you are in charge and your explorations of tone are rendered via a palate of choice entirely at your own command. You know you are artistically rendering reality into the abstractions of art. Or, a lesser photographer can simply engage in point-and-shoot; to accept the black box of a camera’s metering and hope for the best, but that’s not intentional art.

I rather think that the intentionality of photographic art is a lesson for how we could manage our environmental policy making affairs. Most of what we do and the results we can observe in relation to our environmental affairs are the result of policy point-and-shoot. We rely entirely on an unquestioned, mechanistic process of command and control, to rules written in the arcane scripts of economists and scientists that are opaqued to external review under a shroud of Zone I basic black. Our policy making exposure meters tend always to ascribe Zone V to a wallow in the indulgences of now. The more interesting zones of long term resilience and short term responsibility are ascribed to the wastelands beyond Zones I and IX.

We need to be more intentional, more artistic, in our metering of environmental affairs. Like Ansel Adams, we need to develop a system of understanding to facilitate a more considered, creative view. The machinery of our environmental policy metering tends to render the scenes we seek to capture as partial interpretations of a vastly more detailed reality. Our black boxes drive the choices we make through selecting the parts of the scenes upon which we focus. Take Photo 2. A stunning sunset scene is interpreted via a weighting to the colours of the sky. The analogy is to dislocate an integrated system of sky and land into choices that select one over the other. When we abstract the whole into dislocated parts, we then focus on one part and lose the rest into the darkness of the shadows. Then we allow ourselves free reign to tune our policy endeavours to the selected tonalities of abstractions like Gross Domestic Product and the like. We tend, these days, to meter our scene by placing Zone V squarely on the metric of money.

Or take Photo 3. Our choice now is to expose for the grass and the trees; the sky is clipped from the landscape of relevance to which our choices are directed. The colours of the scene which attracted our attention are now rendered to an ugly unbalanced focus on the habitat we have selected for the grazing of our cows. 18 per cent grey is now toned to the metric of the productive input of grass. The artistry of the scene which first attracted our attention and awe is now enfeebled through the misplaced metering of policy makers without the sensibilities of art or understandings of the aesthetically connected whole.

Or take Photo 4. That’s an image beyond a camera’s usual range. It’s a composite image assembled across multiple layered exposures. It’s an image that facilitates emergence of insight and inspiration through the collaborative synthesis of different perspectives on the 3D scene to which our cameras might be tuned. Photo 4 is an image of the interplay of different perspectives that correlate still only as approximations to the raw landscape we seek to interpret and understand. It’s still a flawed image to be sure. But it captures more of the detail to which our attention should be drawn. It reminds us of the richer picture of reality that first inspired our attention. Above all, this last image is one that has gone beyond the capabilities of point-and-shoot. It is the result of deeper insight into the way images are captured; into the mysteries of metering and the tonal limitations of the medium we have chosen, whether for the artistry of image taking or for managing the complex realities of the scene to which our attention has been focused.

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