Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer. He was best known for his black and white photos of the American West.

In the beginning of his journey as a photographer, he took photos as a visual diary of his experience. This links to David Campany and how he says that photographs can capture special moments people want to keep forever, or that they could simply be to document something.

On April 10th 1927, Ansel Adams went to the diving board in Yosemite National Park to photograph the Half Dome. He had a vision of what he wanted his photo to look like, he felt inspired. Firstly, he used a yellow filter when taking the photograph. A yellow filter is commonly used in black and white film to absorb all light except yellow. However, the photograph was not what he visualised, there was no excitement in the photo. So, he took out his red filter and exposed the camera for 5 seconds. A red filter which transmits only red light and absorbs all other colours. This matched his vision.

The photograph he took with the yellow filter is on the left. The photograph with the red filter is on the right. The red filtered image is much more well exposed and makes the photograph look a lot more dramatic and allows the focus to just be on the rock.

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”

Ansel Adams

This is one of Ansel Adams’ most famous quotes. I think this is important as it tells photographers that you should have to work to create a photograph. When you ‘take’ a photo, you don’t really create it. It communicates the lack of creativity. I think it kind of implies how you are taking something that isn’t your own. When you ‘make’ a photograph, it implies that creative decisions where made in order to produce that photo and that you made it your own.

The Zone System

The Zone System was created by Fred Archer, a portrait photographer, and Ansel Adams. It is a scale consisting of 11 tone values which allows a photographer to achieve optimal film exposure and ensure that the photographs are properly exposed each and every time. The darkest tone value on the scale is Zone 0 (Pure Black) and the lightest is Zone 10 (Pure White). Adams and Archer first introduced their method at the Art Centre School of Design in Pasadena, California. They said that it would help photographers to analyse the brightness levels of the landscape and manage the way those brightness levels would be rendered in the final printing.

Below is a black and white photograph labelled with the zones corresponding to the tone values in the picture.

The Zone System has helped so many photographers develop their work. Ansel’s photographic assistant, Alan Ross, brought the Zone System back into modern day. He said that the Zone System allows you to “achieve more accurate, consistent and planned results”. Ross was a photographer best known for his black and white photos of the American West. Below is one of his photographs which he has used the Zone System to achieve optimal film exposure and create a well-exposed image.

Group f/64

Group f/64 was a group of photographers founded in 1932 who had similar photographic styles. The group consisted of; Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Preston Holder, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard Van Dyke, Brett Weston, and Edward Weston. Their photographs had a sharp focus and were carefully framed.

I think the name is original and quite creative as f/64 is an f-stop which represents the smallest aperture possible when using large-format view cameras at that time. F/64 allows as much of the picture as possible to be in sharp focus as it has the greatest depth of field. It allows the photograph to be really good quality and be really clear with lots of definition. This is a very important element in the group members’ work.

Ansel Adams was born on February 20, 1902 and died on April 22, 1984 He was well known as an American landscape photographer and environmentalist who specialised in his black and white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64 which is an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favoured sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He joined the Sierra Club in 1919, which was an environmental group established to preserve the natural wilderness of the Yosemite Sierra. During the group’s hikes and camping trips, Ansel was able to soak up the sublime wonder of the landscape. It was then that he began his career as a pioneering American photographer. Adams then published his first photographs in the club’s 1922 bulletin. Adams also claimed the he would “vision” his image before taking it because he wanted to capture what he could exactly what he saw in the present.

These are some pictures of his work.

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The term f/64 refers to a small aperture setting on a large format camera, which secures great depth of field, rendering a photograph evenly sharp from foreground to background.

Group f/64 was created when Ansel Adams and Willard Van Dyke, an apprentice of Edward Weston, decided to organize some of their fellow photographers to promote a common aesthetic principle. In 1930s Van Dyke established a small photography gallery in his home. He called the gallery 683 in honour of the name of his house “as our way of thumbing our nose at the New York people who didn’t know us”, a direct reference to Stieglitz and his earlier New York gallery called 291. Van Dyke’s home/gallery became a gathering place for a close circle of photographers that eventually became the core of Group f/64. Many different Photographers gathered at Van Dyke’s home decided to put together a group exhibition of their work. They convinced the director at the de Young Museum to give them the space, and on November 15, 1932, the first exhibition of Group f/64 opened to large crowds. The group members in the exhibition were Ansel Adams (10 photographs),. Four other photographer were invited to join the exhibition, each contributing four photographs. Edward Weston’s prints were priced at $15 each; all of the others were $10 each. The show ran for six weeks.

To create this picture he put a red colour filter at the end of his lens to manipulate the shades and tones of the photo, this gave the photo a monochrome look and feel.

Contact Sheet

I’m not happy with the way this shoot turned out as the lighting wasn’t good. I spent a day going to different areas in Jersey, but the weather darkened the light, so there was no drama or intensity in the sky. I will try and re-shoot these images on a better day as I would really like to capture light behind clouds, and on the cliffs to create a less dark set of images.

The 4 places that i have put ovals around are where i am considering doing my photoshoot. These places consist of Greve De Lecq, Plemont, Portelet Bay and Rozel Bay

I am going to be taking photos of natural landscapes such as beaches, cliffs and fields while trying to avoid man made objects such as houses and cars. I am also going to try and avoid capturing people in my photos up close. I haven’t decided if I am going to create the images in monochrome inspired from Ansel Adams or keep the colour in the picture inspired by Josef Schultz, Another aspect which will help determine my decision is what the weather is like as I plan to go out on the 19th or 20th of November. If the weather is windy and raining I will be able to capture more lively and chaotic pictures due the waves and the trees being effected by this, or if its more of a clam day and bright. I would be able to capture more light which would differ the colour of the picture.

Fact file

Born in 1902 on February 20th in the USA, Adams was a photographer with a preference for a full tonal range in his pictures. He married in 1928 and had two children, Anne and Michael Adams. Unfortunately, Ansel met his untimely end in 1984. ​

In his life, Adams was part of a group called f/64. It was founded by 20th-century San Francisco Bay Area photographers; Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, John Paul Edwards, Preston Holder, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Sonya Noskowiak, Henry Swift, Willard Van Dyke, Brett Weston, and Edward Weston. These photographers shared a common photographic style characterized by sharply focused and carefully framed images.

image analysis

In this image, I thought Ansel Adams had cleverly constructed the photograph since the image directs our view point through the use of leading lines. in this image, it is the lake that acts as a leading line as it creates a path that leads the viewers eyes around the image stopping at the top of the mountain. Having this position of the lake also help to create a feel of depth to the image, also meaning that when taking the photo Adams must have considered where certain shadows and highlights would be.

This photo has been taken at face on angle with the camera aiming towards the mountain​. The picture being in black and white gives an eerie feeling due to the amount of darkness seen in the image along with the cloudy grey sky, however, it could be argued that the picture also has a calming atmosphere by the lake bringing light back into the image. The black and white within the image helps to add a dramatic flair to the image which is a common theme throughout his pictures.

In this image, the big, dramatic clouds shown behind the mountain top give off an anxious feeling to the viewer since the appearance of them resemble a sandstorm about to cover the mountains and trees below.​

The rule of thirds is shown here too, where the mountain and clouds joining in the middle right of the image. Adams used leading lines through the use of the curved mountain edges pointing towards the trees below.​ The viewer would probably feel anxious when observing this image due to the huge clouds raining down on the mountain. ​

This picture was taken from a eye- level view, we can tell this by the fact that the trees are taller than the perspective. This picture uses natural lighting and the focus point of the image is the mountain due to it being the largest thing in the image, naturally drawing our eyes to it. ​

The image might be trying to show the beauty of nature due to the lighting and placement of the image. It also appears to be very detailed form the reflection of the lake to the individual leaves on the trees standing out.

I like how perfectly timed this image was with the wave crashing into the rock making it dramatic. The photo was taken from a hillside at a high angle using a front person perspective to capture the image. He also uses high contrast in this image due to the colour variation. ​

The Zone System

The Zone System is a photographic technique for determining optimal film exposure and development, formulated by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer.

Ansel Adams was born February 20th 1902 in California, Adams is one of America’s most famous photographers and is known for his stunning photos of the American wilderness and his passion for conservation. Ansel Adams’ photography puts the American wilderness on display, highlighting its enormity and beauty through dramatic black and white photos.

Adams’ knowledge of cameras and the science behind them allowed him to visualise his photos before he took them.

Ansel Adams joined the Sierra Club in 1919, an environmental group established to preserve the natural wilderness of the Yosemite Sierra. He spent as much time as he could in the Yosemite Sierra. In years to come, he even became the keeper of the club’s LeConte Memorial Lodge. During the group’s hikes and camping trips, Ansel Adams was able to soak up the sublime wonder of the landscape. It was then that he began his career as a pioneering American photographer. Adams published his first photographs in the club’s 1922 bulletin, and held his first one-man exhibition at the club’s San Francisco headquarters in 1928. In 1934, he became a member of the Sierra club’s board of directors.

This is one of Adams most famous pieces of work it is called “the face of half dome” it was taken in a national park in1927, taken during a treacherous journey through Yosemite’s LeConte Gully trail with a small group of friends, the trip took

Adams techniques.

One of the key compositional techniques that Adams employed in many of his images was to place the horizon about two-thirds of the way up the frame. This would mean the composition was biased in favour of the landscape rather than the sky and would help to communicate the epic scale of the scene. 

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. 

Ansel Adams made photos as he visualised the photos before he took them and manipulated them to make the photos look how he visualised them. That why he said i made/created photos instead of taking photos. Adams wrote wrote 10 technical manuals on photography which helped him become famous for his style and making it a world famous style of photography.

Ansel Adams used a large format camera to take his photos, he also used filters to add dimension, depth and drama to his work whilst using black and white film. Adams used a red filter in some of his most famous work as he found that it added the most dramatic effect, but will often ruin the cloud pattern, yellow has the least dramatic effect on the sky and photos and then their is orange which is in the middle it gives a dramatic feel to the photo but without darkening it too much. The darker the filter the harder it is ti let light into the camera, so there for the image will be darker.

Where: L’etacq clifftops & surrounding area

(lots of dramatic landscape giving way to distant horizons giving lots of opportunity for focus on skylines)

When: Late afternoon/evening

(chance for colourful/dramatic skies and eerie effect through twilight)

What: Horizon and landscape

(to allow simplicity and brilliance through observational style photography)

How: Using Aperture priority setting

(to ensure the entire photo/focal points are in focus)

Why: Replicate work of Romantic artists

(such as Turner/Don Mccullin/Ansel Adams/Fay Godwin/Constable etc.)

Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist, renowned for his monochrome photographs of the American West. Adams was part of groups such as Group f/64, an community of photographers, that he helped create, advocating “pure” photography, favouring sharp focuses and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph.

He and some other photographers also created their own “zonal system,” a system that helped to ensure all tonal values would be represented in a photo – consisting of 10 primary colour values from black to white.

Adams’ work includes several aspects of romantic views, and captured the essence of the sublime in a way it never had been before – creating dramatic, bold compositions of mountains, national parks, and other incredible natural landscapes – so much so that it was in competition with painters at the time.

He used red filters to add drama, darkening hues and widening the contrast between the blacks and whites. Adams grew fond of this technique throughout his career, using it primarily when creating his most iconic work.

For my photoshoot i am planning on taking photos of a lake i live next to, i am going to plan on going in the morning to be able to capture the morning haze, i will take some of the photos on a low shutter speed to give the falling water a misty, blurred effect. I am planning to take my photos here as it is an enclosed area and is unique.

I am planning on taking photos at the sand dunes in St Ounes, i have picked this area as on a cloudy day the surroundings give off a sense of sublime due to the aesthetic of the greenery against the golden sand, i am also going to take the photo using a film camera gives off a sense of nostalgia due to the potent colours the film projects.

I am also planning on going to a costal area around Jersey Grev De Lecq i am going to go put i am going to go on a cloudy day to try to create a romanticism photo, i am also going to try to go to sights of special interest to get photos of the water breaking against the rocks.

i believe that by me doing this photoshoot it will help me develop my photography skills and give me more time to get to grips with working with cameras.