Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer. Who is most known for his timeless photograph of the ‘Face of Half Dome’. His extensive knowledge of cameras and the science behind how they worked allowed him to visualise the image before he had even taken it.
Ansel became frustrated when an image would not get developed how he visualized it, therefore, he created the ‘zone system’. This was originally made to determine his vision for tones within a picture it also links to the exposure settings of a camera. The 11 zones in Ansel Adams’ system were defined to represent the gradation of all the different tonal values you would see in a black and white print, with zone 5 being middle grey, zone 0 being pure black (with no detail), and zone 10 being pure white (with no detail). Theoretically, each zone represents one f-stop in exposure.
Face Of Half Dome
The photo on the left shows the picture that would have been taken without Adams changing the camera’s exposure. Whereas, the photo on the right is the image of which he visualised where the background was zone 10 (pure black).
The story behind the Face Of Half Dome:
On April 10th 1927, Ansel and his four friends set out to go on a hike to photograph this soon to be iconic cliff edge. However, this was not his fist time going to the Half Dome. Ansel had spent four of his teenage summers in the area, and the first time that he photographed it he was fourteen years old.
In order to achieve the dark background Ansel was experimenting with different coloured filters where he was using a yellow filter, however, almost immediately switched to a dark red filer which darkened the sky and added depth into the shadows of the mountain.
He has also created the perfect exposure. The Time element is about shutter speeds which is the duration of time the shutter is open for, therefore how long the film, plate or sensor is exposed to light.
photo literacy:
Ansel Adams is considered to be one of the most famous landscape photographers of all time, above is a photo taken which is a perfect example to use with his zone theory, the trees would be a 0 and the river would be a 0.
Shooting in daylight, into the light shown by the silhouette of the trees most likely used a slow shutter in order to gain a sharp clear image.
Here are some pictures of the contact sheet of my first photoshoot I have done. My first photoshoot is of Le Hocq and around that area. This shows the process of me selecting and discarding images and rating them on a scale of green being some of my best images, and red being some of the more poor images that maybe aren’t as good.
Final images
These are my outcomes from my first romanticism photoshoot. Some also have quite urban aspects.
Ansel Adams was an American photographer, born in San Francisco, who was best known for his landscape images which showed the raw beauty of nature as Adams wanted to conserve the beauty of nature. He grew up near the Golden Gate where he liked to go and explore which is why he would hike up in the National parks to get his final images. In 1919 he joined the Sierra Club and spent four years in Yosemite Valley, where he took many of his most famous images and started his success. In 1928 he had his first one man exhibition at the club’s San Francisco headquarters.
Adams was apart of a group called ‘f/64’ which refers to a small aperture setting to enable you to get a large depth of field and everything being sharp and in focus. There were 11 members in the group who wanted to promote ‘pure’ photography.
He would vision his image before taking it (visualisation) because he wanted to capture what he could see in front of him. This would involve changing the filter he used to get different exposures. Adams used a Brownie Box camera which was given to him when he first visited Yosemite National Park. The camera is seen below.
The image see above was captured after Adams had hiked along Yosemite’s LeConte Gully to the ‘diving board’. The feature capture is the Yosemite National Park’s most iconic features. When he first took the photo he used a yellow filter however, the image didn’t come out how he had visualised it. Adams then changed the filter to a dark red one which made the sky darker and produced the contrast between the shadows and bright white snow which is visible in the final image.
Ansel used a zoning system he created to ensure his images he taken had the contrast he wanted which to be displayed and visible in all his final images.
The zone system
Image Analysis:
This is a digital photo of the Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. The mis-en-scene presents the Snake River and the Grand Tetons. It also presents cloudy areas in the photo which can be seen in the top left third. The right side of the image contrasts with the rest of the image as it is vastly darker than the rest of the photo. The use of light is natural and is coming from the left of the image which is why there is a shadow on the right side. This photo has been taken from a straight on angle from somewhere higher than the river which enables Adams to get the river and mountains in the frame. All of the image is in focus which suggests that the image was taken with a large depth of field. The colours and tone of the image is monochrome. The photographer has used leading lines as the river draws you to the mountains. He has also, clearly used the rule of thirds.
I will be going to various sites of interest in Jersey in order to take pictures that feature elements from Romanticism and the Sublime in the form of landscape photos.
Some places I will go to are:
10 – Le Pinacle, 5 – St. Ouen’s Bay, 8 – Le Grand Etacquerel, 7 – Le Petit Etacquerel, 9 – Le Pulec. All on Sunday 20th Nov in the Afternoon.
I will be mostly taking inspiration from Ansel Adams, known for wide landscape shots. I will try to experiment with the lighting, like darker shots, which I think will go very well with the rainy weather and harsh wind.
Ansel Adams in an an American photographer and environmentalist, who was the most important landscape photographer of the 20th century
His images were often monochrome highlighting the beauty in the formations of the landscapes rather than just focusing on the colours present, it adds a dramatic and powerful tone to the images potentially portraying the power of mother nature and the sublime drawing attention to the beauty of the environment around us.
He came up with a technique he referred to as the zone system, the 11 zones were defined to represent the gradation of all the different tones you can see in a black and white, with zone 5 being in the middle as grey, zone 0 being pure black, and zone 10 being pure white.
GROUP F/64
He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph…even creating a Zonal System to ensure that all tonal values are represented in the images. Ansel Adams was an advocate of environmental protection, national parks and creating an enduring legacy of responses to the power of nature and sublime conditions…Other members in Group f/64 included Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham among other female photographers who has been overlooked in the history or photography.
One of the most important legacies of Adams is the way in which his photographs contributed to the American conservation movement. His technical expertise and the undeniable beauty of his work paved the way for photography to be exhibited beside traditional painting and portraiture in national galleries.
The face of half dome
When speaking of Ansel Adams’ photography, the most famous is Monolith, the Face of Half Dome. This was Adams’ first photograph that gathered the attention of the public and the art world. Using his Korona camera, Adams captured his iconic photo of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park after a difficult hike.
visualisation
Photographic visualization is the confluence of imagination and technique. It is the ability to picture the essence of the final print in your mind before releasing the shutter.
Adams believed strongly in the notion of ‘visualisation’, though today you’ll likely hear it referred to as ‘previsualisation’. This involves a photographer standing in front of a scene and seeing the final image in their mind (right down the post-processing) before even pressing the shutter.
His black and white nature photography was known for being a rejection of the Pictorialism movement that came before – a heavily manipulated style of photography that aimed to enhance the beauty of the subject matter instead of documenting reality. Instead, Ansel Adams wanted to capture exactly what he saw.
Don McCullin is one of the most famous and successful photographers alive, and has been knighted for his efforts in documenting some of the most brutal conflicts the world has seen in his generation.
Vietnam,1969 On a hill in Da Nang a priest hears soldiers’ confessions
Born in 1935 in London, he was evacuated to a farm in Somerset during the Blitz. He was awarded a scholarship to attend Hammersmith School of Arts and Crafts, however, following his father’s death when he was only 15, McCullin left school for a job on the railways. He was then enlisted in the RAF in 1953 for his National Service.
Having been posted at the Suez Crisis, McCullin worked as a photographer’s assistant after failing the written theory test to become a RAF photographer (possibly on account of his mild dyslexia) and he was mostly in the darkroom during his service. It was during this time that he purchased his first camera (a Rolleicord) for £30 whilst working in Nairobi, pictured below.
His photographic career began in 1958, after his image of a local London Gang was published in The Observer.
Finsbury Park, London, 1958 The Guvnors
From 1966 to 1984, McCullin was employed by the Sunday Times Magazine to document the man-made and ecological disasters happening across the globe, and his coverage of human strife in a multitude of settings is famed for its raw and honest nature.
Biafra,1969
McCullin’s images of the Somerset landscape depict a dramatic, isolated perspective and use the defining nature of the film camera to the fullest extent. Their consistent employment of the ethereal cloudscapes and rolling hills of the countryside combine to create quintessentially Romantic images.
A farm entrance near my house in Somerset, 2008
The River Alham that runs through my village in Somerset, mid-1990s
Batcombe Vale 1992-93
Here I analysed one of his images taken in France in 1999 – relating to his role as a war photographer.
Fay Godwin was a British photographer known for her black-and-white landscapes of the British countryside and coast. She was born on the 17th of February, 1931 in Berlin, Germany and she died on the 27th of May 27, 2005 in Hastings, United Kingdom. She photographed many different landscapes that fit into our definition of romanticism, as her photos showed the true beauty of the wild nature around us.
Her photography has sometimes been linked to a tradition of romantic representations of the British landscape, in the manner of Bill Brandt or Edwin Smith. But, as a socialist and active environmentalist, Godwin makes the land in her photographs reveal traces of its history, through mankind’s occupation and and intervention.
“My way into photography was through family snaps in the mid-1960s. I had no formal training, but after the snaps came portraits, reportage, and finally, through my love of walking, landscape photography, all in black and white. A Fellowship with the National Museum of Photography in Bradford led to urban landscape in colour, and very personal close-up work in colour has followed”
— Fay Godwin, ca. 2000
Photographer Fay Godwin
Analysis
Fay Godwin 1985 UK
This is one of Godwin’s photographs that she took, capturing an old, broken down fence situated in a deep forest that continues to grow around it and slowly start to engulf it in its greenery. This photo clearly presents the idea of the sublime, comparing a the ma made fence hidden in the depths of the wild forest around it, indicating the insignificance of human’s and their creations. There is a mixture of tone in this image, there being a gradual transition between light and dark tones throughout the image. The grass on the forest floor has a dark tone and the sunrays flowing in through the tree tops are made up from light tones. Furthermore, the sunrays shining through the trees create leading lines in the photograph, guiding our eyes through the image and causing us to take in all the details situated in the photograph. This image consists of a very apparent foreground, mid ground and background. The sunrays glowing through the image create a distracting foreground, while the fence creates a contrasting midground and the shadows of the trees deeper in the forest create a background. This creates depth in the image, portraying how Godwin saw the forest in its many different aspects and parts, causing the photo to appear deeper. There is a pattern created by the repetition of straight sunrays reaching the forest floor, creating an interesting look within the photograph. There is a strength of lightness created by the sun, which illuminated the dark forest and uncovering details that would normally be hidden by the shade cast by the trees. The texture of the photograph appears quite gritty, due to the camera the photo was taken on, this contrasting with the smooth and linear appearance of the rays. The composition of the sunrays flowing out of the top left corner of the photo, causes it to become the area of focus, being the brightest and most visible area of the image.
Wynn Bullock
Wynn Bullock was an American photographer whose work is included in over 90 major museum collections around the world. He received substantial critical acclaim during his lifetime, published numerous books and is mentioned in all the standard histories of modern photography. He was born on the 18th of April, 1902 in Chicago, Illinois, USA and he died on the 16th of November, 1975 in Monterey, California, USA.
“Theoretical scientists who probe the secrets of the universe and philosophers who seek answers to existence, as well as painters such as Paul Klee who find the thoughts of men of science compatible with art, influence me far more than most photographers.”
— Wynn Bullock
Photographer Wynn Bullock
Analysis
Wynn Bullock
This is one of Bullock’s photographs that he captured, photographing a mountain range that reaches above the clouds. This includes the idea of the sublime by showing a untouched aspect of nature, reaching higher than any building a human could create. Bullock clearly focussed on tone, creating an image that highly contrasts between dark and light tones. Each dark mountain is separated by the light tones created by the misty clouds. There is also a contrast between texture, the mountains having a rocky, harsh texture and the clouds having a misty, smooth and wispy texture that flows between the rocky landscape. There is also a clear foreground and background in this image, creating depth in the photograph and showing the vast landscape that Bullock was face to face with. The interchanging between the rocks and the mist causes there to be a pattern in the photograph, causing the photo to be even more effective and unique.
