Mark Haworth-Booth, curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, guides us with patience and great care through the intricacies of what Camille Silvy had accomplished in his 1858 image named "River Scene, France" by creating an image composite from various negatives.

In his revealing study, Haworth-Booth narrates how Silvy's "River Scene, France" may appear to have been taken with a wide-angle lens, and goes on telling us "but this effect results in part from the optical effect of the oval format. A rectangular mask placed over the photograph establishes a quite different general impression. The clouds, as they do in the photolithographic version of Aguado's 'Ile des Ravageurs', greatly accentuate the perspectival depth". The difference clouds make to a landscape was well described by a contemporary critic: "A sky should convey the effect of space, not surface, the eye should gaze into, not upon it, and instead of coming forward and throwing back every other object it should retire and bring the landscape into prominence. Landscapes without skies, with only a uniform white tone above the ground, were found wanting by critics. They lacked atmosphere. But the blue sensitive negatives of the time made landscapes with skies an almost impossible challenge."

Silvy apparently solved the problem by photographing a landscape and the sky separately, on separate negatives, and probably on different occasions and in different places. He joined landscape and sky at the printing stage. This process had already been publicized widely by Hippolyte Bayard in 1852. This method became a widely accepted practice at the time.

With great foresight, Mark Haworth-Booth consulted in 1982 with Ansel Adams, as to his interpretation of "River Scene, France" and these were the words in the letter of response: " You will note that there is a dark value in the trees above the bottom cloud line. This indicates that the masking was not done adequate in this area ( it is not apparent in the trees to the right)". He also detected "something 'phoney' about the light-edged clouds along the horizon; they look to me as they were retouched in." Adams also thought that "the little shed on the left looks dodged or 'bleached'". He pointed out that "there is no reflection of the clouds, the water foreground has been burned-in and the roof of the little shed is in the area of the main burn-in, and consequently darker than expected.... The right hand side of the picture is in a different light from the left hand side. There is a definite 'dodging' area above the roofs on the far left." Adams concluded, we are told by Haworth-Booth : "It is pretty good optically. The 'old boys' did some remarkable 'cut and paste' jobs; I am surprised that the green foliage comes through so well....Apparently it was quiet water and very little wind ( if any)".

After reading these remarks I recently asked Sarah Adams, if she thought that her grandfather would have taken to digital photography, to which she responded:

"Yes, we believe Ansel would have been immersed in digital technology. Several possible reasons:
a. More environmentally sound
b. Archivability / restoration of older negs
c. Greater access to color realm
d. The newness of new tools; recently learned that at the 1915 Pan-American exposition in SF at the age of 13 he taught himself quickly the art of typing and taught others at a booth!!?!:)
e. Access to photographic manipulating tools: dodging and burning, etc."

I was intrigued by her response, in particular to the last sentence, where she refers to the tools of manipulation, with the dodging and burning, leaving, as I see it, the most important opportunities of digital transformations in the realm of the etceteras. In an oblique manner however, she does acknowledge all that can be accomplished with such tools, as she leaves the door open with that very useful expression that fits so well when we need to be imprecise, etcetera.
I don't say this in a critical manner, because there is no room for that; my observations relate to the anecdotal value of how someone chooses to describe what promises to be the biggest transformation of photography since it was first discovered. She is certainly in plenty of good company when it comes to describing the tools that promise to unlock the future of photography as etceteras.