Ansel Adams was born in 1902 in San Francisco, he grew up in a house set amid the sand dunes of the Golden Gate. Adams was a famous photographer, most known for his landscape photography capturing Americas natural beauty. When he was very young, the great earthquake of 1906 happened and affected him and his family. He badly broke his nose, distinctly marking him for life and making him feel very self conscious. Natural shyness, along with his disfigured face, caused Adams to have problems fitting in at school. He was not successful in the various schools to which his parents sent him, this led to his father taking up the role and tutoring him at home. The most important result of Adams’s somewhat solitary and unmistakably different childhood was the joy that he found in nature. Adams took long walks in the still-wild reaches of the Golden Gate, nearly every day he found himself hiking the dunes or meandering along the beaches or forests. When Adams was twelve he taught himself to play the piano and read music. He soon realised that he was not going to become professional in music, so he ultimately gave up music to focus on photography.
While sick in bed with a cold one day at age 14, Ansel read a book that would eventually change his life. James Mason Hutchings’ In the Heart of the Sierras caught Adams’ imagination, and he soon managed to convince his parents to vacation in Yosemite National Park. From his first visit, Adams was transfixed and transformed. Equipped with a simple Kodak Box Brownie camera his parents gave him, he hiked, climbed, and explored, gaining self-esteem and self-confidence whilst snapping the first images of what would become a lifetime of incredible artistic productivity. He spent substantial time there, due to the love he had for the place, every year from 1916 to his death.
In 1919 he joined the Sierra Club and then spent six summers accompanying High Sierra tour groups as trip photographer. He became friends with many of the club’s leaders there and he also met his wife, Virginia Best, and they married in 1928. The Sierra Club was vital to Adams’s early success as a photographer and his first published photographs appeared in the Club’s 1922 Bulletin.
1927 was the pivotal year of Adams’s life. He made his first fully visualized photograph, Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, and took his first HighTrip. Adams came under the influence of Albert M. Bender, a San Francisco patron of arts and artists. The day after the pair met, Bender set in motion the preparation and publication of Adams’ first portfolio.
In 1928, Adams and Virginia Best became married, who also happened to be the daughter of landscape painter Harry Cassie Best. Best’s Studio in Yosemite Valley was a convenient place for Adams to display his photography, and after Virginia’s father’s death in 1936, Ansel and Virginia took over the studio. The couple had two children, Michael and Anne, who grew up in the Valley. The children eventually also became involved in the family business, renamed it The Ansel Adams Gallery.
In 1933, he made his first visit to New York on a pilgrimage to meet photographer Alfred Stieglitz, who gave him a solo exhibition at his gallery An American Place in 1936. After this meeting, Adams opened his own gallery in San Francisco. Most importantly, in 1936 Stieglitz gave Adams a one-man show at An American Place. He gained much attention over the years and influenced many people through his photography. His black-and-white images were not “realistic” documents of nature. Instead, they sought an intensification and purification of the psychological experience of natural beauty. He created a sense of the sublime magnificence of nature that infused the viewer with the emotional equivalent of wilderness, often more powerful than the actual thing.
Ansel did not only influence people through his photography, he also influenced people through his respect for nature. Adams routinely lobbied personally for conservation efforts. And perhaps nowhere was he more successful than in the creation of Kings Canyon National Park. Kings Canyon sits immediately to the north of world-famous Sequoia National Park. in spite of its stunning natural beauty and its proximity to Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon itself remained unprotected into the 1930s. And by 1936, its future as a natural wonder was in jeopardy. The powerful river in the park plunges nearly 11,000 feet in just 80 miles. It carried enormous potential as a power source, which led water interests into the idea of creating a series of large dams in the canyon to conserve the power. The Sierra Club entrusted the job to Ansel Adams, one of their most prominent members, to convince Congress to protect the High Sierra.
Over the course of the fight to preserve Kings Canyon, Ansel presented his portfolios proudly when eventually meeting with over 40 members of Congress. Of course, the photographs themselves were stunning, but equally compelling were Ansel’s personal stories of hiking the John Muir trail and how his experiences in the High Sierra led him to devote his life to photographing and preserving America’s natural heritage. Though the idea to preserve the canyon failed in 1936, Ansel’s fight was not over. In 1938, he published his Kings Canyon images as a book, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail.
The United States secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, received a copy from the Director of the National Park Service, and realised it was not only just a book, it was an argument: protect Kings Canyon. Ickes was so convinced to help Adams that he took a copy to the White House, and set it in front of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Finally, as the President of the United States took a look at this stunning book, capturing the full grand view of Kings Canyon, Ansel’s argument found purchase. Just two years later, in 1940, Kings Canyon National Park was founded, and today it sees over 600,000 visitors a year.
Examples of his work
This particular image caught my eye as I love the contrast between the dark thundery clouds and the highlighted points, like the unique granite esplanade. Through this image, Yosemite Valley is presented in a beautiful way. This image documents not just the fierce beauty of a looming thunderstorm, but one of Yosemite National Park’s most beloved aspect, the classic Tunnel View. Ansel made this stunning image in 1949, and published it . To increase the contrast and show off the ethereal beauty of the rain-soaked forest in the valley below, he used a yellow filter, which darkened the sky and intensified the stormy, To increase the contrast and show off the ethereal beauty of the rain-soaked forest in the valley below, he used a yellow filter, which darkened the sky and intensified the sinister, ominous clouds.
What is the Zone system?
The 11 zones in Ansel Adam’s ‘Zone System’ are used to represent the graduation of all the different tones you would see in a black and white print and divide the photo into eleven zones, nine shades of grey, with pure black at 0 and pure white at 10. With this system, Adams was able to perfectly control the contrast in his black and white photos. Adams base rule was: “Expose for the shadows; develop for the highlights.” The biggest advantage of understanding a Zone System is that it allows you to be in control over the photos. Nowadays, the Zone System focuses more on understanding how digital cameras respond to different levels of light and dark. The Zone System allows you to get the right exposure every time without guessing. It does not require you do any special film development and you never have to waste time with bracketing.