Ansel Adams (1902 – 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist. His photos of the American West are often seen on calendars, photos and books.  Adams founded the photography group ‘Group f/64’. He was part of the romanticism movement and produced lots of striking landscape photographs in black and white, often involving a pathway of some sort and interesting weather.

Ansel Adams is a key photographer within the romanticism genre of landscape photography. He was one of the most influential people  that inspired many of the modern day photographers to capture the pure beauty that lays within our earth. He focuses on capturing the untouched areas of our world and exaggerating the pictures to create dramatic and intense photos.

Image analysis

This photograph appears to have been taken with only natural light.  Typically, wide angle lenses were and still are used to capture landscape photos, which is likely what would have been used to create this image. This image has a large tonal range, with the foreground and parts of clouds very dark and sinister to the peaks of the mountains, illuminated in snow. This image entails a large depth of field as the closest parts of the image are sharp and in focus as well as the furthest points such as the clouds. A fast shutter speed would have been used to capture this image because we can see there is no motion blur within the river or the clouds. If a slower shutter speed was used, then the clouds and river would have became silky and smooth with motion blur creating this. There is a great use of leading lines within this photo as the river and trees/banks on either side of it, leads the viewers eyes from the trees in the foreground all the way to the mountains in the background. The composition of this photo is effective yet doesn’t use the rule of thirds to its potential. The only use of rule of thirds int his photo is where the horizon sits on the top horizontal line. There is little use of rule of thirds used because Adams is trying to show that it is natural and it is the subject that is beautiful rather than the actual photograph itself. I think Adams was trying to influence the idea that the environment is beautiful by using little editing.