Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West.

He helped an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favoured sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph, this group was called group f/64. This stands for the smallest aperture achieved at a large format camera. which is a type of camera Ansel and his team were using at the time, the advantages of it is that it has incredible depth of field and huge amount of detail due to the size of the negative, and negatives is that it is heavy and would be difficult to carry it to some hidden places with interesting background, as well as the equipment that comes with it is heavy.

To ensure all the tonal values are represented in a photograph , he came up with the zone system, this system is said to make the “perfect” photograph and he would often make his photos darker then the original or the ones he would firstly take.

Zooming into one of his images to the point where it is so pixelated and the little coloured squares show a range of colours , where each square is a different shade of black&white, supporting his zone system.

Ansel Adams is known also for his visualised images , he wanted the images to look just like he visualised them in his head, he noticed that what he saw with his own eyes did not look the same on the camera, therefore he experimented with the camera he had to achieve this image as the one in his mind.

With his camera he tried to make a photograph with a yellow filter yet this wasn’t an effect he wanted , he wanted to darken and exaggerate the shadows, so he changed the yellow filter to a red one. this might of been an image he saw with his eyes but not what he saw in his head.

I have researched history behind one of his most famous images through https://www.anseladams.com/story-behind-the-image-monolith-the-face-of-half-dome/. On a spring morning of April 10th, 1927, Ansel Adams set out along Yosemite’s LeConte Gully to capture an image of the face of Half Dome, one of Yosemite National Park’s most iconic natural features. As a teenager he was working as the keeper of the Sierra Club’s nearby lodge in Yosemite Valley. He and his friends decided to take on a hike to capture the beauty of the Yosemite national Park. This journey was very life changing for Ansel as he just recently realised he started to drift from the musician profession he had, into photography. The photograph he made, shows the mountain rising from an ink-black sky, its face illuminated by a dazzling midday sun just out of frame. Like i said before, Ansel initially made an exposure using a yellow filter, he immediately swapped that for a dark red filter, which darkened the sky and produced the deep shadows and bright light we can see in the final image. It was a startling expression of emotion and drama from the young photographer, and its technical excellence and artistic mastery would soon launch Adams’ career as one of the finest commercial and fine-art photographers of the 20th century.

Personally i wanted to educate myself on his work as his images have a mystery behind them and aren’t just simple block&white images. if the images were taken now this effect would be achievable through editing and adjusting exposure, darkness, shadows, brightness etc. However whats so amazing is that he achieved this by changing a colour that he put over the lens. it his experimentation that i find ambitious and determination to achieve the exact image that he inspires to, and wont give up until he produces exactly that.

Like with the above image, which is a perfect example of Ansel’s work. looking at this image although it is in black&white so many tones are displayed, these tones are balanced and this is what makes the image make sense on its own. if the photograph was in colour a lot of colours would be seen, he not only decided to photograph an interesting location but chose a very good time of day where the sun is coming from the right making sharp highlights within the image. as the image is darker then usual, meaning to achieve this effect, today there would have to be a dramatic exaggeration of the shadows and dark areas. This effect creates an interesting image that relates to the idea of the sublime, where it may scare but amaze, create that terror and awe.

As Ansel Adams was a revolutionary photographer that came up with many strategies for photography one of being the zone system, however being such a great photographer he also said inspirational quotes such as the one above. There are many other quotes but I have decided to talk about this one as it is the most personal to me and I think it has a deeper meaning. I think this quote relates a lot to his work the most as because the idea of visualisation behind each image frames the quote. “expression of one feels” to me defines the art of photography and what photography in my opinion should stand for, it should encourage people to express themselves, to be creative, in a way to show emotion and what a person feels or felt when making the photograph. That’s why he defines photography as being an expression of what one feels as to him this is very important element of photography, to be able to show his visualisation, feelings or the way his mind works through his photographs.

I created these edits in Lightroom, using a range of different editing techniques as well as applying different filters for different effects.

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Image selection

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In the areas I have circled I am going to take pictures around some lanes and fields which are in St Lawrence.

The images above are taken of different lanes in Jersey.

I am going to be taking photos of natural landscapes such as fields, Lanes and woods. 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 am going to make 2 sets of images inspired by both Ansel Adams and Josef Schultz, Another aspect which will help determine my decision is what the weather is like, If the weather is windy and raining I will be able to capture more lively and chaotic pictures due the trees moving. On a bright day I would be able to capture more light which would differ the colour of the picture.

Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Groups, such as f/64, of photographers that advocated “pure” photography which favoured sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph and using his work to promote conservation of wilderness areas.

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

Formed in 1932 group f/64 constituted a revolt against Pictorialism. The group is named after the smallest setting of a large-format camera diaphragm aperture that gives a nice resolution and depth of field.

Many photo historians view the group as an organized faction consisting of the first seven photographers, and view the other four photographers as associated with the group by virtue of their visual aesthetics. However, in an interview in 1997, Dody Weston Thompson said that she was invited to join. She stated that Brett Weston also considered himself a member suggesting that knowing all the members is difficult to determine due to the informality of the group’s shifting social composition during the 1930s and 1940s.

Women of the group

While not all official members of Group f/64, the female photographers showed their work in the first exhibit, each displaying their own style, journey, and place in the history of photography. 

The women of the group include:

-Imogen Cunningham

-Sonya Noskowiak 

-Alma Lavenson 

-Consuelo Kanaga 

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moody and black-and-white landscapes:

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coloured landscapes:

Here are some physical mood boards I made:

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I made these mood boards by printing off landscape images and cutting them up and gluing them all together in different compositions to show the images I am inspired by.

I went out to greve de lecq on a Saturday when it was raining and took multiple images of the sea and rocks. Ideally wanted to do nit on a sunny day but struggled as it was raining all week

First I imported my images into Lightroom classic and the I flagged the ones that I wanted to keep and edit.

Then I duplicated my images and edited them black and white them black and white.

After I edited my images that where is colour and added more vibrance and warmth to them.

These are my final images from my first photoshoot.

I feel that these two pictures are similar due to the display of the objects and the movement of water. The first image is taken by Ansel Adams and the second is from my first photoshoot .