Ansel Adams, born February 20, 1902 to April 22, 1984, was the most important American landscape photographer and environmentalist who created famous black and white photographs mostly based in the American West. He was the grandson of a wealthy timber baron and grew up in a house set amid the sand dunes of the Golden Gate. At age 4, there was an aftershock of the earthquake and fire of 1906 which threw Adams onto the ground where he sustained a bad nose break. This distinctly marked him for life. His high level of intelligence, shyness and permanently injured nose caused Adams to struggle with fitting in at school. it became clear to him later on in his life that he may have been hyperactive. As well as this, it was highly likely that he also suffered with dyslexia. he was taken out of school and tutored by his father and his aunt. His childhood of a limited amount of friends or socialising lead him to be immersed in nature where he’d been commonly found taking walks and hikes in the still-wild reaches of the Golden Gate. At about age 12, Adams became a gifted and ambitious pianist. After he received his first camera in 1916, Adams also proved to be a talented photographer. He devoted his dedication to being inspired by the forgotten and unspoiled wilderness of America’s national parks and other protected conservation areas in the West.

He was the one to found the group of photographers called Group f/64. This group consisted of people who shared the same interest in photography characterized by sharply focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly American Western viewpoint. Group f/64 were Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, Henry Swift, John Paul Edwards, Brett Weston, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Levenson, Sonya Noskowiak, and Preston Holder.

The Zone System

He and a man called Freud Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System. The Zone system assigns numbers from 0 through 10 to different brightness values, with 0 representing black, 5 middle grey, and 10 pure white. Thought they were a group, each person had their own interests/specialities that all came together to show a range of photograph from different places or things. For example, Adams’s images of Yosemite National Park, Edward Weston’s close-up, high-detail photographs of fruits and vegetables and of sand dunes, and Cunningham’s studies of calla lilies.

Ansel Adams and Romanticism

apart from the contrast of colour uses, these photos are very similar to each other. One main characteristic of romanticism is emotion, and in both photos, I can receive the emotion of calmness. the use of the two rivers represent piece and tranquillity. both images focus on one natural landscape of a mountain/hill. this can also be linked with romanticism since it tends to focus on natural things rather than manmade. in the romanticism photo, another thing that relates to this point about natural is the use of the animals. Another emotion, which contrasts with calmness, could also be a sense of fear and negativity and this could be represented with the sky. Ansel’s image looks much more dramatic in terms of an approaching storm as you can see that, in terms of his Zone System, the clouds start to approach a 3 or 4. Though the romanticism isn’t as dramatic, the weather is still a similarity. As stated before, there is an obvious contrast of colours since Ansel’s photos are all in black and white and focus mostly on the darkness/lightness of the shades whereas the romanticism photo is filled with warming tones.

Influence on others

Ansel Adams main influence has been to awaken people to the beauty of nature. Each of his photos focus on natural landscapes where it captures different aspects of the world (in this case, American west) and the beauty of them within a photograph. Ansel Adams biggest development was the Zone System, a technique for determining optimal film exposure and development, which has clearly had a huge impact of the photography world. His invention has helped many photographers with the control of image values, ensuring that light and dark values are rendered as desired and just improving their images over all.

Image Analysis

This was one of Ansel’s photos called ‘Fern Springs, Dusk’

It is clear that Ansel has only used natural daylight with no artificial as it is a natural scene where he wouldn’t have the equipment properly set up in a place like this for artificial light. The use of him using natural light clearly shows the patients he has to be able to wait for the correct moment of light to pass through the water as well as his exposure time on his box camera. Though the image is black and white, I think it stills gives off a cool tone due to the overuse of bright white. as well as this, the brightness of the water drips also closely resemble ice crystals. Adams has managed to use space well, he has zoomed close up to the natural landscape so that is leaves no empty spaces and its all filled with the natural aspects. I think Adams choice of photographing a waterfall is very effective with the theme of naturalistic landscapes as water is a very obvious natural element.

My Response -> Ansel Adams

This is one of the landscape photos that I had taken while I was in France. I liked this image because of how it matched Ansel Adams photo of the mountain and snow. I took this image in colour where the sun was hitting the top of the mountain. I edited this image on photoshop by going to adjustments and then black & white. from there, I was able to adjust the different colours with the scale. this meant that I could make some parts of the photo look darker and some look lighter