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 This was originally made to determine his vision for tones within a picture it also links to the exposure settings of a camera.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.

So far, I’ve really enjoyed the Home project. I’ve learned a lot more about editing than I did at GCSE and I’ve experimented with many new types of compositions, such as the still life work, which I’m very proud of and I’m excited to hopefully revisit it in the future. I found still life to be a pretty versatile topic for creating photographs with, and especially with the available equipment in the studio, it gave me a chance to experiment with lighting and different tones that I didn’t have before.

I thought that the photomontage work we did with our final images worked quite well, and it’s definitely something I can see myself revisiting later in the course with new and stronger ideas.

I wasn’t too excited about the work we did with Mary Ellen Bartley and her ‘7 Things Again & Again’ series, but I also think it was quite a good introduction to basic photography and working with lighting and props in a composition.

I quite enjoyed the work with Walker Evans and Darren Harvey-Regan, as I found it very engaging with my own life and the objects in my home. It was also a nice introduction to photomontage using photoshop, which is a technique I hope to use when relevant.

who was he:

Ansel Adams was known as an American landscape photographer and carried a pictorialist style through out his images. Adams liked to visualise his images before he took them and used the quote “you don’t take a photograph, you make it”. He was also a part of the Group f/64  which refers to a small aperture setting on the camera which allows for great depth of field sharpening the foreground and the background and making the image stand out. This allowed his images to have depth and many different tones throughout them.

ten tones:

Adams based his images off the ten tones ensuring he had every tone in his images. Be doing this it allowed his images to be more dramatic making them stand out to the viewers more.

face of half dome:

Ansel Adams was known for his most famous images called ‘face of half dome’. The image captured the attention of the public and art in the world. It showed the viewers the sheer mass of the rock and how powerful it made the image with it being so intimidating. The different tones that run throughout the image allow it to take on the sublime look conveying fear and power.

comparison:

Edward Weston was also an American photographer who influenced many others in the 20th century. Weston was also a part of the Group f/64 who promoted a style of sharply defined, and detailed photography. The photographers in the group focused their work of it being ‘pure’.

Adam’s wrote to Weston reassuring him how powerful his work was,  “I can’t tell you how swell it was to return to the freshness, the simplicity and the natural strength of your photography”. Both used great depth of field to add sharpness and detail in their images with the ten different tones. This tell us that even though the two were against each other in the photography industry thy got along and thought greatly of each others work.

some of Adams’ work:

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.

Image Comparisons:

Ansel Adams, part of his ‘in our time’ project

Adams’ image

My image

Adams’ image

My image

Ansel Adams was an American landscape photographer. Who is most known for his timeless photograph of the ‘Face of Half Dome’. His extensive knowledge of cameras and the science behind how they worked allowed him to visualise the image before he had even taken it.

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. 

Face Of Half Dome

The story behind the Face Of Half Dome:

On April 10th 1927, Ansel and his four friends set out to go on a hike to photograph this soon to be iconic cliff edge. However, this was not his fist time going to the Half Dome. Ansel had spent four of his teenage summers in the area, and the first time that he photographed it he was fourteen years old.

In order to achieve the dark background Ansel was experimenting with different coloured filters where he was using a yellow filter, however, almost immediately switched to a dark red filer which darkened the sky and added depth into the shadows of the mountain.

He has also created the perfect exposure. The Time element is about shutter speeds which is the duration of time the shutter is open for, therefore how long the film, plate or sensor is exposed to light.

photo literacy:

Ansel Adams is considered to be one of the most famous landscape photographers of all time, above is a photo taken which is a perfect example to use with his zone theory, the trees would be a 0 and the river would be a 0.

Shooting in daylight, into the light shown by the silhouette of the trees most likely used a slow shutter in order to gain a sharp clear image.

Contact sheet

Here are some pictures of the contact sheet of my first photoshoot I have done. My first photoshoot is of Le Hocq and around that area. This shows the process of me selecting and discarding images and rating them on a scale of green being some of my best images, and red being some of the more poor images that maybe aren’t as good.

Final images

These are my outcomes from my first romanticism photoshoot. Some also have quite urban aspects.

Mood board:

Ansel Adams was an American photographer, born in San Francisco, who was best known for his landscape images which showed the raw beauty of nature as Adams wanted to conserve the beauty of nature. He grew up near the Golden Gate where he liked to go and explore which is why he would hike up in the National parks to get his final images. In 1919 he joined the Sierra Club and spent four years in Yosemite Valley, where he took many of his most famous images and started his success. In 1928 he had his first one man exhibition at the club’s San Francisco headquarters.

Adams was apart of a group called ‘f/64’ which refers to a small aperture setting to enable you to get a large depth of field and everything being sharp and in focus. There were 11 members in the group who wanted to promote ‘pure’ photography.

He would vision his image before taking it (visualisation) because he wanted to capture what he could see in front of him. This would involve changing the filter he used to get different exposures. Adams used a Brownie Box camera which was given to him when he first visited Yosemite National Park. The camera is seen below.

The image see above was captured after Adams had hiked along Yosemite’s LeConte Gully to the ‘diving board’. The feature capture is the Yosemite National Park’s most iconic features. When he first took the photo he used a yellow filter however, the image didn’t come out how he had visualised it. Adams then changed the filter to a dark red one which made the sky darker and produced the contrast between the shadows and bright white snow which is visible in the final image.

Ansel used a zoning system he created to ensure his images he taken had the contrast he wanted which to be displayed and visible in all his final images.

Image Analysis:

This is a digital photo of the Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. The mis-en-scene presents the Snake River and the Grand Tetons. It also presents cloudy areas in the photo which can be seen in the top left third. The right side of the image contrasts with the rest of the image as it is vastly darker than the rest of the photo. The use of light is natural and is coming from the left of the image which is why there is a shadow on the right side. This photo has been taken from a straight on angle from somewhere higher than the river which enables Adams to get the river and mountains in the frame. All of the image is in focus which suggests that the image was taken with a large depth of field. The colours and tone of the image is monochrome. The photographer has used leading lines as the river draws you to the mountains. He has also, clearly used the rule of thirds.

Comparing Ansel Adams and Edward Weston:

Photoshoot Plan:

Photoshoot:

Final 5 images to edit:

Image 1:

Image 2:

Image 3:

Image 4:

Image 5:

Final Images: