Ansel Adams

Biography = Ansel Adams was a photographer and an environmentalist. He was born in San Francisco California. Ansel Adams had a joy and love for nature which made him different and some what solitary.

What was Ansel Adams known for ?

Ansel Adams was most known for his black and white landscape images of the American West. He designated his work to the countries remaining fragments of untouched wilderness.

What influenced Ansel Adams Photography ?

Adams was inspired by precursors in government survey and expedition photography, such as Carleton Watkins (1829-1916), Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), Timothy O’Sullivan (1840-1882) and Frank Jay Haynes (1853-1921), who worked with large, bulky cameras and glass-plate negatives.

Ansel Adams photography

Ansel Adams photography represented the sublime because he photographed these overwhelming landscapes that capture the raw nature of the environment. He often took very dramatic images and changed the colour of the filter on his photos to get that dark black colour in order to make the focal point of his image stand out.

Image Analysis

The colour in this image is in black and white and uses the Zone system which uses different shades of white, black and grey with 0 being the darkest and 10 being the whitest. The leading lines of the river lead your eye to the focal point being the mountain. The texture of this photo is very grainy and has a bumpy texture to it. The composition of this image is arranged perfectly because the leading lines and the focal point of the mountain are right in the middle and it fits the rule of thirds.

The Zone System

The Zone System was the colours that were in Ansel Adams photographs and each colour had an aperture in difference. The colours ranged from 0-10 with 0 being the darkest colour and 10 being the lightest.