It must have been back in 1999 when good fortune caught me staying at The Inn on Spanish Bay just up the road from the links at Pebble Beach. Few places offer more breathtaking vistas and opportunities for relaxation. When you next stay there, I greatly recommend the squid special, black ink and all, and that bagpiper chap playing at sunset, praying a gust of wind will not disclose all.

Anyway, as is the wont of ladies in overpriced neighborhoods, my better half went shopping (ouch!) while I strolled the few yards from the front door of the Inn to the grandly named Weston Gallery. A very sincere young man, schooled in the world of sales, immediately buttonholed me and asked my interest. I did not have the heart to disabuse him of his evident belief that Ansel Adams should replace at least one, maybe two, members of the Holy Trinity, so rather than saying ‘Anything But Adams’ I ventured that I rather enjoyed American landscape photography of the west. Noblesse oblige, and all that.

Well, drat, it didn’t work. I was marched over to the Adams Collection, the salesman doubtless eyeing my less than pristine Levi Button Fly Shrink to Fit Jeans, and wrongly concluding that I was another in a long string of Silicon Valley venture capitalists off for a day or two to blow some serious coin. Sadly not the case. Yes, it must have been 1999, for memory suggests that 2000 was not the happiest in history for Silicon Valley, and I was feeling pretty happy at the time, pre-ticker shock.

Now, I first began to smell a rat, nay a giant size capybara, when this smug twit pulls on a pair of cotton gloves, proffering a matched set to me. Now I know that parting photography collectors, excuse me, investors, from their hard-earned dough requires something akin to surgical precision, but I was a tad confused as to what the devil I was to do with these gloves.

Kind of when a friend asked me to belt up in his racing Cobra. I looked at the darned belts with confusion, having seen nothing like them before. “Standard Simpson racing belts” he intoned with the bored air of one who has seen it all before. Do I knot these things together or what? I remember thinking. Only when he made a dive for my crotch – a troubling moment indeed as I never suspected he was one of Those – did I realize these things come up through the legs and buckle together from all directions over the very part my old mum used to afford me sustenance through before I first saw this wonderful world.

Anyway, being offered those cotton gloves caused that same momentary look of fear to cross my face. Was I going to be asked into a dimly lit back room next? Mercifully, El Twit donned his by way of example so I dutifully followed suit, making nary a complaint that my fingers were about two inches too long for what was offered. Discretion, in this case, was surely the better part of valor. I think I sort of pulled it off by affecting an air of insouciance while struggling in a manly way with the wretched gloves.

So there we are, The Twit and I, standing in the Weston Gallery, cotton gloves and all, when he starts pulling prints from a drawer. Each, you should know, was some 5”x7”, matted with acres of white and separated from its neighbor with a sheet of something. Acid Free, I was immediately assured Oh! says I. No hallucinogens in this joint, even when it comes to the price tag. Bother!

Now much as I would die happy never seeing one of these again, there they all were. Half Dome, the fake Moonlight Hernandez (you know, the one taken in broad daylight with poor old AA spending hours dodging and burning in his darkroom, but forgetting to get rid of the shadows cast by the gravestones in the bright sun), the one of Bridal Veil Falls, the absurdly over-filtered Monolith, and many others I shudder to recall. You would think the purifying qualities of monochrome would at least filter out the worst lapses of taste, but Adams managed to hurdle that barrier with supreme ease. Can you say Monochrome and Garish in one sentence? Because, believe me, seeing these ‘originals’ made me realize he had accomplished something his books only hinted at. Loud Monochrome. How so poor a collection of over-manipulated fakes could manage to fit in one drawer boggles the mind, but El Twitto was saving his best, his killer sales line, for last.

“And here Sir is our finest masterpiece from the Ansel Collection”. Needless to say, it was yet another print of Half Dome. But wait a minute, how do I break it to this chap short in grey matter that the print was yellowed and faded? Now I liked the look – at least half the garishness had almost disappeared. “Seems a bit different from the one you showed me earlier”, I offered. “Yes, Sir” responds the sycophantic nonentity, “this print was made by Mr. Adams himself, no less”.

“Oh”, says I, “How do you know?”. Well, that was a bit like calling the Queen German. It may be true, but it is not said in polite company.

“Sir, please”, he intoned, wrist held just so, “It’s our job at the Weston Gallery to know”.

Well, in true civilized manner, I quickly steered the conversation to the weather and isn’t it really lovely here and where would you recommend for dinner?

Sadly, he wasn’t buying it. “Well, sir, what do you think of the Ansel print?” A familiarity available only to those who have never met the famed subject of their dreams. “At $15,000 we think it very attractively priced for an investor like yourself who obviously appreciates fine art.” And to think I could get the really garish one for a mere five large.

Now you must understand that this Weston Gallery is not a place to admit to color lightly. White walls, El Twitteroony all in white, white flowers even. When you see that much white you know sticker shock cannot be far behind. Nonetheless, the vivid shade of green I had just acquired contrasted quite nicely with the foul yellow of this appalling print held in Twitterino’s becottoned manglers.

Home of The Twit

So I quickly pulled out that old line which is a curse to salesmen everywhere. “Oh! it’s really quite special, I agree, but let me check with the wife and get back to you”. The power of agency. Always blame someone else. I would love to, but…. Look, I Really love it, but the old ball-and-chain, you know. Got to check with the little lady. Can’t rob the grocery money. So I leg it out of there, shedding cotton gloves right and left and quite possibly setting a new World and Olympic record for the 100 metres.

Why, oh! why, do fully half of all art photographers want to imitate something so bad? Have they not the courage to recognize poor darkroom work and worse photography when they see it? Or is it just the comfort of hordes? Don’t rock the boat and no one will notice. The way to fix art photography? Ban all cameras from Yosemite.

Look, if you love Adams’s work well and good. Ask yourself why and don’t expect everyone else to.

I emigrated from the United Kingdom to the United States in 1977 so now more than half of my life has been spent in America, some of that in New York but mostly in California. What so attracted me to the New World was my experience working with Americans in London. The singularly distinguishing attributes of the ‘Yanks’, as xenophobic Englishmen still thought of them back then (now we have the equally unappealing sobriquet ‘Brits’ for my former countrymen), were that they had a lot of fun in doing whatever they did and their driving sense of purpose. They were goal oriented.

What has all that to do with photography? Well, I am convinced that without a sense of purpose your chances of taking good photographs are poor to non-existent. As for profits in business, opportunities for good photography rarely just happen. If you are going to go swanning about, camera in hand, blithely hoping that something good will come alone, well, keep hoping. You have to make it happen.

I believe this to be true regardless of whether your subject is the serendipitous one of street photography or the much more planned variant of the landscape. I happen to enjoy both. Maybe a couple of illustrations will do the trick.

As the proverbial impoverished student in 1977, my last year in London, I mustered what little cash I had and boarded the ferry to Calais, then the chemin de fer to Gare du Nord in the heart of Paris.

I had two very focused goals in mind.

One was to visit the Louvre, the Orangerie and the Jeu de Paume museums and art galleries in the Jardin de Tuileries in the heart of the First Arrondissement. My sole purpose was to gorge on nineteenth century French painting. Corot and Boudin. Cezanne and Manet. Renoir and Monet. Degas and Seurat. Painters modestly represented in the great British museums, but very much on their home ground in the Tuileries Gardens. Fulfilling that goal, with the three galleries a stone’s throw apart, involved nothing so much as a stout pair of shoes and the entrance fee.

The other was to see and photograph the light of Paris, that light which I had studied for so many years and dreamt about experiencing first hand. Paris has the twin distinction of being the most beautiful city of the Western Hemisphere and well as having the most gorgeous light. Or maybe it is so beautiful because of the light? Lacking the lugubrious architecture that typifies much of London and, mercifully, lacking that city’s foul weather, Paris is a city of joy and romance where London is one of industry and commerce. Artists created one, burghers the other. And for all the bad things we, as Americans, may think of the Parisians, casting off those veils of prejudice reveals a magnificent place for the ages. Truly you have not lived until you have been in Paris.

So to finally have the opportunity of taking photographs in Paris was not only immensely exciting, visual and sensory overload threatening at every corner, it was a goal I had long strived for. And Paris did not disappoint.

Jardin de Tuileries, sunrise

Jardin de Tuileries, noon.

Jardin de Tuileries, evening.

And even when you come across something very special, a picture that you will always remember the journey by, luck has nothing to do with it. I waited for two hours at the Holocaust Memorial, that monument to French Guilt, for the juxtaposition of the players to be just so:

Holocaust Museum, Paris.

There are very few lucky accidents in life or in photography. A goal, a sense of purpose, makes luck happen.

Set that goal and only then pick up your camera.

Some historical context is appropriate.

The Nazi hordes had swept Western Europe before them. Only Britain alone was holding out, having grimly fought back the air invasion during the Battle of Britain during the fall of 1940.

America remained staunchly isolationist, egged on by Nazi sympathizers Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, both sporting Iron Crosses awarded by Hitler. Roosevelt, anything but an isolationist saw the threat and had enacted the Lend-Lease legislation which provided a lifeline of essential supplies and materiel to Britain, braving the perilous Atlantic route. His hands, however, were tied by a reluctant Congress.

British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, saw early on that the Nazi terror could only be crushed with America’s involvement, and had set about a long courtship of Roosevelt shortly after the epic air battle over the fields of South East England had been won.

On one of his many visits to the United States in 1941, Churchill made a side trip to address the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa on December 30, 1941, famously intoning: “When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone, whatever they did, their Generals told their Prime Minister and his divided cabinet that in three weeks, England would have her neck wrung like a chicken – Some chicken! Some neck! The brilliant use of American vernacular (Churchill’s mother was American) produced loud applause and laughter from the assembled House of Commons.

It was appropriate that the speech should be in Ottawa, for that fair city was home to a refugee who would soon make his name as the most famous photographic portraitist of his time, Yousuf Karsh.

Churchill had not been forewarned that his portrait was to be taken after the speech and was suitably irritated on being led into the antechamber where Karsh had set up his camera and lights, puffing mightily on his cigar. Karsh asked him to remove the cigar and, when Churchill refused, snatched it from his mouth to take the Greatest Photographic Portrait ever made.

In this magnificent picture you see a statesman at the peak of his power, defiant, belligerent, determined.

After the first picture was taken – the whole sitting was all of four minutes in duration – Churchill permitted Karsh to take still another, jokingly commenting “You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed.”

The picture made Karsh’s reputation, and deservedly so.