Ansel Adams is an American photographer born in 1902 and is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in landscape photography.
His work aims to convey the scale and the power of natural scenes. He does this in a unique way by romanticizing these landscapes. This means he enhances the landscapes past what the eye can see.
He was also a pioneer for a tonal system called the Ansel Adams Zone System – his photographs would convey a very large tonal range from true blacks to true whites in the exact same image.
He was part of a new wave of photographers in the early 20th century who divorced themselves from pictorialism and he became an advocate for “pure photography”. This is a style of photography which focuses on sharp focus high clarity and great tonal ranges.
He is known for his stunning landscapes of American national parks specifically the mountains he captures.
The above image is of the Snake River in the Grand Tetons in 1942.
The first discernable feature of this image distinctive to Ansell Adam’s work is the impeccable contrast and tonal range where he has captured every tonal level from the pure black in the foliage in the bottom left and some of the mountains to the pure whites in the river, the snow and the clouds. Ansell probably used a lot of burning when exposing this image to get these pure whites. Knowing Ansel’s past and his emphasis on the pure photography movement we can relate this to the above image with the emphasis on a high clarity crisp image with high contrast. This detail adds a sharp texture to the image which can be seen to emphasize the sharp summits of the mountains in the background.
The image also has a great depth of field. There are many components layering the image from foreground to background. The distant mountains contrast with the near foliage. The winding river adds perspective of depth with its ripples which create a sense of detail being prominent in the foreground, these details and the rivers size slowly diminish as it meanders and winds like a snake through the middle of the image.
The summit of the mountain is framed in the center of the image which creates a sort of aesthetic pyramid form to the image.