‘You don’t take a photograph, you make it.’ – Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was a 1940s photographer known for his black-and-white images of the American landscapes. He advocated “pure” photography which favoured sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He even created a Zonal System to ensure that all tonal values are represented in the images. Zone 0 is pure black, showing no details. Zone 5 is “middle grey”, it would represent the sky in a lot of his images. Zone 10 is pure white, it would show light sources or reflections in an image, in his famous image, Face of Half Dome (1927) it shows the colour of the snow on the side of the half dome.

He helped found the group f/64, which was a group of photographers that focused on ‘pure’ photography. This type of photography focuses in on sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range in the image. He was also seen as 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.

This is one of Adams most famous pieces, featuring a cliff face which Adams photographed in 1927. Adams hiked along Yosemite’s LeConte Gully. Once getting to the desired location, Adams set up his camera and snapped a photo, which resulted in the photo on the right. Despite it being an accurate photo, it wasn’t what Adams has previously visualised and he was unsatisfied with it. He decided to add the red filter, and once again snapped a photo. This time, it resulted with the image on the left, a perfect replica of Adams’ visualisation, a darker image with a variety of tones and high contrast.

Story Behind the Image: Monolith, The Face of Half Dome