An Inside Look at Ansel Adams' Darkroom Magic 

Well. This is a great example of what photography was (is) in the first place : Craft. One MAKES a photography. Even more obvious in the old,days where releasing the shutter was just one step in middle of a process, right after composing, framing, determening depth of field, B&W filters etc, and right before going to the reverse process with the enlarger, and finally, the process of printing, and framing the photograph properly. Great video !!!

This is pure Photography Gold. Thanks for sharing the experience. much appreciated.

As a new age digital young professional knowing something but not lots about the old photography workflows I truly love this channel. Thanks for sharing!

Hi Mark: What a treat to visit the dark room of one of my life time favorite photographers. Pretty amazing! I had no idea how involved and evolved his dark room process was. Thanks for the insight. Fred

The true photography,Master Ansel,fantastic!!!!

love your work an artist at work all hands on deck star

Oh my god.... Precious footage... Thank you so much for sharing this video!!!

So wonderful to see where the Master worked. How could anyone give this a "thumbs-down"?!?!

I believe (that's to say.. I've heard from different sources over the years) that Ansel's horizontal enlarger was built by his good friend, Adolf Gasser (Michael Adams says that Ansel "had 'some help' putting it together". Ha! Gasser was one of the finest 'mechanics' for photographic equipment of the era! ). As for John Sexton designing the ventilation system, doesn't sound likely because I believe that enlarger was installed in the early 60s, when John was a kid.

I wonder if it was really a microwave, Ansel Adams used. We used to use a heater oven at low temperatures or a heated glazer to dry our barite prints. However, I could still believe he used a microwave... after all, he adopted (invented) many other things like the enlarger with indidual light switches! That's awesome!

Wow!! He created his own Photoshop system.

Fascinating insight into the great man's darkroom Marc. I wonder what Ansel would have made of Photoshop and it's ability to transform and manipulate images. Photography or graphic design?

The man was a genius!!

5:30 wow - custom *36-bulb* monster enlarger!

I bet Ansel had seen a lithgraphers process camera. This homemade rig is similar.

I wonder why all those lights had individual switches instead of one master switch to control them all. Did it help with exposure or dodge and burn or something?

just like old times huh... though its nice to see other people's dark room setups as my school only had the most basic when it comes to printing film photography and normally we worked and tried to match with a wet photo we didnt learn any more than printing so the "art" of dodging and burning wasnt taught but the basics could be used as for the multiple light setup while at first it may not seem to serve no purpose as it all depends on the enlargement of the photography but with a weaker light stream you get more leeway when it comes to calculating the time to expose the photo on paper (typically 3-5 seconds at full blast with a single bulb) so if you arent as "healthy" as your used to, then time is probably your friend at that point especially if you work alone without any help makes we wonder if he had individual light switches how did he take the paper out of the light stream to begin the developing process? surely having to switch of the lights one by one would be hard or maybe the multiple light setup is just there in any case he would need to deal with larger negative plates

Cameo by Frederick Van Johnson from TWIP

In the microwave!!

Ansel was extremely careful in his use of language to describe his process / technique. The use of "darkroom magic" is most unfortunate.

He keeps calling the enlarger a camera.