Ansel Adams was born February 20, 1902, San Francisco, United States and passed away April 22, 1984. He was an American landscape photographer and was known for his black-and-white images of the American West (Grand Canyon in Arizona and, his favourite, Yosemite National Park). Distinguished by extraordinary clarity and profundity, his photographs are amongst the most recognizable images in the world, reprinted in numerous magazines, journals, and wallpapers. Since an early age Ansel had shown some interest in spending majority of his time outdoors considering he was home schooled. Until he was eighteen years old he considered himself a musician, but later swapped his career in music with photography.
The morning of April 10th, 1927, Ansel Adams set out along Yosemite’s LeConte Gully to capture an image of the striking sheer face of Half Dome, one of Yosemite National Park’s most iconic natural features
When the group reached the Diving Board, a steep outcropping more than 3,500 feet above Yosemite Valley, Ansel knew this was the perfect vista from which to capture Half Dome’s sheer face. The photograph he made, “Monolith, the Face of Half Dome,” shows the mountain rising from an ink-black sky, its face illuminated by a dazzling midday sun just out of frame.
Monolith, the face of Half Dome, 1927
Group f/64
The group’s name (Group f/64) derives from a small aperture setting on a large format camera, which secures great depth of field and renders a photograph evenly sharp from foreground to background.
During the Great Depression, the citizens of America looked towards the West and the opportunities it offered, particularly through massive public works projects. This is why it was important for individuals like Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, Henry Swift, John Paul Edwards, Brett Weston, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Sonya Noskowiak, and Preston Holder, who were the original f64 group members, to present it to the rest of the country in the most realistic, revealing way.
Edward Weston
From 1934 through to 1948 Edward Weston explored his favourite subject matter which contained natural forms, landscape, nudes and people.