About Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams, (born in San Francisco in 1902 and died in 1984) was a photographer and environmentalist. When Adams was four years of age he was a victim to the great earthquake and fire of 1906. This earthquake threw him to the ground and because of this he badly broke his nose, distinctly marking him for life. A year later the family fortune collapsed in the financial panic of 1907. The most important result of Adams’s somewhat different and more difficult childhood was the joy that he found in nature and photography.

The face of half dome

This is one of Ansel Adams most popular images. He went through a lot of travelling and hiking up snowy mountains to get the photo. On the right is the first image he took without a red colour filter on the camera. Adams felt that the image had no drama and outstanding quality to it, so he decided to take another photo but using a red colour filter on the camera. This made the image more dramatic and gave a huge range of black to white tones, with the sky being black and the snow and some parts of the mountain being white.

The pixilation of this image shows that Adams managed to include each tone on the black to white scale. This could of encouraged him to make his zone system, which he created in 1940.

The zone system

This zone system was created by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer. They developed this zone system to help photographers control their black and white images. It was also designed to provide structure for determining exposure, which ensured that the photographer could create a properly exposed image each time they took a photo. It was made to put the 11 zones into order of gradient. Each zone represents all of the different tones you would see in a black and white photo.

Mood board of images by Ansel Adams

This range of images Adams has produced shows the efforts he went through to take these photos. With many of them being of mountains and high up places looking over valleys and rivers. All of the images show a gradient going from black to white and having every shade inbetween.

The large format camera takes images with the measurements of 4*5 inches or more. The camera is large and heavy and best for taking and producing high quality prints. The two main type of large format cameras are: field and studio cameras.

This camera was used by Adams. It was not digital and had no exposure settings. There were different colour filters that you could switch between to change the look of the photo. Adams had to carry this camera with him when he hiked up mountains/hills and went through a lot of work to get the right photo.

Group F/64

The group f/64 was formed in 1932. They were a loose association of California photographers who promoted a style of sharply detailed purist photography. The original group members were; Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, John Paul Edwards, Brett Weston, Conseulo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Sonya Noskowiak and Preston Holder. The name of this group was taken from the smallest setting of large-format camera diaphragm aperture that gives a good resolution of depth of field. Even though the members of the group had a wide range of subject matter in their work, they were all similar in the way that they all used the camera to photograph life as it is.