This program was made possible in part with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Polaroid Corporation.

♪ ♪ From the wisp of a cloud ♪ ♪ to the seed of a song ♪ that's talking to you, ♪ ♪ ♪ telling you just ♪ how important it is ♪ ♪ to keep the ♪ earth growing strong.

♪ ♪ It's talking to you.

♪ ♪ Listen, ♪ ♪ pass it along.

♪ ♪ You got the message.

♪ ♪ Make it a part of ♪ this beautiful land.

♪ ♪ Pass it along, ♪ ♪ keep it healthy and strong.

♪ ♪ W e've got to ♪ pass it along.

♪ Crescent> I'm so excited.

Isn't the center wonderful?

Lee> I suppose so.

Crescent> What's wrong?

Lee> It's just that it isn't mine anymore.

Crescent> Of course it is.

You're just sharing it, that's all.

Lee> It doesn't feel very much like mine.

Crescent> But you made it all happen.

Lee> I don't think so.

Come to think of it, I guess it never really was mine.

Crescent> Does that matter?

You've always been a part of it.

Lee> Maybe you're right.

Crescent> Sure I am.

Hey.

I got a present for you.

Lee> Oh, yeah.

Let's have it.

Crescent> It's in here.

Lee> Crescent, they're photographs by Ansel Adams.

Crescent> You like them?

Lee> I love them.

They're the best presents you could have given me.

Crescent> He was good, wasn't he?

Lee> One of the best.

Crescent> He saw me as a kid, too.

Not many people do.

You know?

Lee> No, I didn't know that.

Crescent> He loved kids.

And he loved nature.

With his work, he taught people how to look at nature in a whole new way.

Lee> Well, go ahead, show me.

♪ ♪ ♪ Crescent> Through the years, Ansel Adams has shot his photographs without using special effects.

Today, Mr. Adams shows us how to use Polaroids.

He enjoys Polaroids because they can help us to see through the camera.

(camera shutters) ♪ Ansel Adams> Well, I know you're all interested in photography, and so am I.

And I hope I can learn a lot from you today.

But I thought I'd tell you a few things.

And then you ask me questions.

But one of the very important things in photography is that you might see something very beautiful, but you're seeing it with your eyes, and then you've got to learn to see it with the camera.

And that's quite different.

And the tone values are different, and the scale of the image, as they focused everything.

So I have a little card here that we use in our workshops to just show that describe that fact to people.

And I want to give some to you, and you look at things through them and see, what they call, you know, the focal length of the lens.

from the eye, would be equivalent from the eye to this square, this rectangle and the equivalent, the lens for me from the film could be here, would take a normal lens, and then go all the way out to here now.

And I look at him with a lens of this distance, I just see his head.

A little the bit down under his neck to his collar, and I can compose him.

And then as I come back, I see more and more of it.

And here I see all of it.

And here I see the three children, and here I see five children, six and if I had a real wide angle lens, I could see all of you.

You got any questions you ought to ask me?

Child #1> What got you into photography?

Ansel> Oh, what started me?

Well, I was a pianist.

I worked very hard at piano, and I always liked doing pictures Making pictures in the mountains.

And in 1927, I made that big one of Half Dome, the face of Half Dome, which was a pretty tough climb.

And that was done on a 6 and a half, 8 and a half, inch camera with a glass plates of 1927. and I have the camera and a lens.

I have a heavy tripod and 12 glass plates.

Child #2> If you take a picture of a wave, how do you get it to like make it so still are not blurry.

Ansel> Well, you asked a very important question.

If you make it two still, it looks like glass.

And if you take too long on an exposure, it becomes all mushy.

So there's just a moment you feel you take a picture which will hold most of it fairly sharp, and you'd like to have a little movement to show this isn't just glass.

Then you won't see a nice shot and sun reflection.

(camera shutters) Crescent> After we talked with Mr. Adams, he had his assistant give us a tour of the dark room.

>> So what we do is we take this negative, and it's put inside this little, carrier that holds it.

And, we close things up there, and it's placed inside the enlarger.

And I suspect you can see the light source there.

Right?

Children> Yeah.

>> What this is, it's kind of like a slide projector or a movie projector.

You've all seen those work, right?

Sits at the back of the room, projects it real big.

Except what we're going to do here.

We're going to project this negative onto a piece of photographic paper.

Of course, once again under safe lights, not under these normal lights.

And we can control the size of the enlargement by raising or lowering the enlarger and by focusing the lens.

Okay.

And this is an 11 by 14 inch sheet of paper.

It's an old print.

What we normally do is set this in this device here that holds the paper flat.

It's called an easel.

Okay?

Under safe lights, when we don't have such bright illumination, we can see it projected there.

Carefully focus the negative onto the piece of paper, and then we replace it with a fresh sheet of paper from one of these light type boxes.

And we'd make an exposure, and we can control how light or dark that print is by the length of time the paper sees the light of the enlarger.

The longer the paper sees the light, the darker it gets.

In most darkrooms, there's a little timer that sits at the side of the enlarger, and you press a button and it goes for five seconds or 10 seconds, however long you might set the timer.

Ansel does things a little differently.

He has a metronome that beeps like that.

This particular metronome is, you might say computerized.

Okay.

So, if Ansel wanted to make a five second exposure, he would just turn on his enlarger for zero, one, two, three, four, five, the end of five seconds.

He would then turn off the enlarger.

After you've exposed the paper under the enlarger.

It's still light sensitive.

There's no image there, though.

Have any of you ever seen a print be developed?

Children> No.

>> You have Jesse.

Okay.

Some of you have.

Well, it's kind of a magical process.

We can't simulate it here under light because you have to be under special safe lights that the paper is not sensitive to.

But normally, what we do, we'd come over here to the wet side of the darkroom.

And if you want to all come over here and take a look at the sink, I have here some prints that Ansel has made of one of his famous negatives, the winter sunrise from Lone Pine.

And these are awaiting some further processing and some toning.

But what we normally do, we'd have a tray set up with developer in it, which contains chemicals that are going to activate the paper and take that image that's invisible and make it visible.

Another tray has stop bath in it, and that stops the developer action.

And then there's a third tray usually.

And that's called fixer.

And that makes the image permanent, so it's no longer light sensitive.

(camera shutters) Crescent> When the darkroom tour ended, Mr. Adams invited us to Point Lobos, one of his favorite spots near his home in California.

We watched on a TV screen as he explained how to frame a picture.

It was fun, and it was the first time he had used a video camera.

He talked with us about exploring our immediate environment for possible pictures.

♪ First, we looked as far as we could see, and as much as we could see.

♪ He called this a wide shot, a wide shot including rocks, sky, clouds and the ocean.

Mr. Adams searched until he found the most beautiful way to frame the watch He called this composing the shot.

We watched on the TV screen and began to understand how to compose a picture.

♪ Next, Mr. Adams made the camera frame a small area.

Then he moved the camera from the wide shot to a small area.

He called it, zooming in.

The small area he called a close up.

We were getting anxious to start taking pictures ourselves.

♪ (camera shutters) In order to help us compose our pictures, Mr. Adams gave us square frames.

He told us to pretend that these square frames were the lens of the camera.

♪ Then we were allowed to use one of Mr. Adams' Polaroid cameras.

These were great because we could see the results of our photos within seconds.

♪ (camera shutters) Everyone took lots of closeups and wide shots.

We learned a lot from using the Polaroid camera, because we could see our mistakes immediately In a snap, we could correct them.

(camera shutters) Mr. Adams made up a game for us.

We decided not to talk to each other.

Instead of talking, we exchanged pictures.

(camera shutters) The wide shots and closeups that we took told the story of this great photographer, who had so much to say about how to look at the world.

(camera shutters) After the game, as the sun was setting over Point Lobos, Mr. Adams shared with us his impressions of our photographs.

He pointed out ways to improve our framing and composition.

(camera shutters) We each took turns sharing with Mr. Adams our pictures, and he picked out his favorite shots from each of us.

He especially liked the wave that I caught.

(camera shutters) Ansel Adams> Well, I think, today is a very interesting experience for me.

And I think it's been for all the children and everybody with us, because we are able to see this rather remarkable place, which I think is probably one of the finest of the state reserves anywhere.

It's practically, almost national park caliber, and the whole environment as we go on over the years, and as you people are going to grow up and the population increases and the environment there's a danger.

There has to be places to use things.

There has to be places to build on.

But we have to be sure that the places that I'm really marvelous and the natural beauty such as this are really preserved.

(camera shutters) Crescent> He was a good man.

Lee> Yes, he was, but, you know, I was wrong about these pictures.

Crescent> What do you mean?

Lee> They're not the best gift you could have given me.

I mean, I do love them and all, but you've already given me a much better gift Crescent> I have?

What?

Lee> Just like Ansel Adams with those kids.

You've given me a different way of looking at things.

Crescent> Oh!

Lee> What's the matter?

Crescent> I'm going to miss you.

That's all.

Lee> Miss me?

I'm, I'm not going anywhere.

Oh.

I had a feeling you might be leaving.

I'll miss you, too, Crescent, Crescent> But it'll be okay.

You'll go back to being an astronaut, and you still have the nature center to come back to.

Lee> Wait a minute.

How did you know I was going back to the space program?

Never mind.

Sometimes I forget that you are who you are.

Charlie> Well, there you are, old buddy.

I just want to let you know I was here and if there was anything... Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't realize you had a visitor.

Crescent> That's okay.

I was going to go anyway.

Bye, Lee.

You'll see me again, I promise.

Charlie> Cute kid.

Lee> Yeah.

You saw Crescent?

You saw Crescent!

Charlie> Of course, I... That was Crescent?

Lee> One in the same.

Charlie> Well, I'll be.

And I thought- Lee>-I know what you thought, but it doesn't matter now.

Crescent showed me that you could make a difference no matter who you are.

>> Come on, old buddy.

We got a nature center to open.

♪ Crescent> Later, when I looked at the pictures that I took that day, I'll always remember talking to each other without words.

We planned on going to more...like Point Lobos.

to enjoy the wide open beauty and have more fun with photos.

♪