Origin of Ansel Adams

Ansel Easton Adams was born February 20, 1902, in San Francisco, California. His family came to California from New England, having migrated from Ireland in the early 1700s. His grandfather founded a prosperous lumber business, which Adams’ father eventually inherited. Adams is most known for his stunning photos of the American wilderness.

Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. Ansel’s photography is known for its realist style. Rather than using a pictorialism style. Adams’s career spans over seven decades and a wide range of subject matter, including portraits, still life’s and the landscapes for which he is most famous.

 Visualization

Ansel Adams describes it as the ability to see the scene you photograph and recreate in your mind, relying on the information you receive from the scene and on your developing intentions that you picture inside your head and the way you take the photo can resemble you as a person as your the one who pictured it to be or look a certain way.

A Legacy exhibition is a comprehensive survey of Adams’ artistic career which he is famous for and made loads of money from it.

What is Ansel Adams famous for?

Ansel 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. He outlines the beauty within America with the way he looked at art and his perspective towards it.

Here is one of his quotes.

This quote shows us how and why he loved photography. He perceived them in a way of a beauty and such natural photos. He didn’t go over the top and just took photos of a his natural setting.

Adams assisted Beaumont Newhall and David McAlpin in forming the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940.

Analysing Adams photos

Many of Adams photos have either balance or symmetry but mostly balance as its a landscape with some elements of romanticism in them. He goes into a lot of depth in his photos and shows us beautiful, aesthetic nature. The mid ground are usually all in line and the background are usually calm with dark colours. The scale of each photograph is large. It shows a massive background and loads of different elements to be looked at, not all drawn or focused on one thing as it has a wide variety of things in the image which is what makes it so interesting and unique. The light intensity of Adams photos are usually quiet dark colours such as grey black and white, usually not using many colours, the temperature is cold and intense. the colours are cold and the effects of these colours are a lot as it sums up the whole picture. There are quiet a lot of shadows in his images as they are all quiet dark colours. It has a strength  evoke emotion and energy, reflect mood, and give a narrative to images. The texture seems to be quiet smooth with some edges and corner because of the landscape photography and the surface is very detailed. Last but not least his tonal values are quiet low as shown in the image below.

Edward Weston

Edward Henry Weston was an American photographer. He has been called “one of the most innovative and influential American photographers” and “one of the masters of 20th century photography, best known for his carefully composed, sharply focused images of natural forms, landscapes, and nudes.

Weston was a modernist. Along side with Ansel Adams, Weston pioneered a modernist style characterized by the use of a large-format camera to create sharply focused and richly detailed black-and-white photographs with a range of different backroads and shades of colours.

Weston V Adams

They concentrated upon natural subjects, Adams tending towards monumental depictions of hulking mountains or clouds, and Weston tending more toward intense close ups of smaller objects such as fruits and vegetables. You can see the resemble in both artist photography even though one is more about nature another is mainly focused on smaller objects.

Both photographers have great talent and have had many rewards and contributions due to their work.

Edward Weston and Ansel Adams were two of the foremost American photographers of the twentieth century. Weston and Adams- Californians were good friends, achieved an influential modernist aesthetic, and created images. They concentrated upon natural subjects, Adams tending photographing mountains or clouds, and Weston tending more toward intense close ups of smaller objects such as fruits and vegetables. Adams usually chose to focus upon the rush of a mountain stream or some other natural movement, rather than the social or political currents of his day. Whereas Weston brought a deep timelessness to his photographs with using close up of fruits or smaller object’s within his photography.

Robert Adams is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to prominence in the mid-1970s through his book The New West and his participation in the exhibition New Topographic: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape in 1975.He looked at aesthetically pleasing photos. He was an environmentalist and usually photographed landscapes and natural enjoinment – similar to Ansel Adams, however they have no relation to each other. Robert Adams is an American photographer best known for his images of the American West. Offering solemn meditations on the landscapes of California, Colorado, and Oregon, Adams’s black-and-white photos document the changes wrought by humans upon nature.

Adams quotes- “I think if you placed me almost anywhere and gave me a camera you could return the next day to find me photographing. It helps me, more than anything I know, to find home.” This shows us his passion of taking photograph’s and his passion for it.

Typologies

 A system used for putting things into groups according to how they are similar : the study of how things can be divided into different types. Eg photographing farm houses- multiple of them as a collective group.

Robert Adams uses Typologies’.

The making of Typologies – Robert Adams

Robert Adams is a photographer who has documented the extent and the limits of our damage to the American West, recording there, in over fifty books of pictures Adams grew up in New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Colorado, in each place enjoying the out-of-­doors, often in company with his father. He was a very successful photographer and had many different exhibitions , making good money and becoming a very well known photographer , he was best known for his images of the American West. Adams’s black-and-white photos document the changes wrought by humans upon nature. Adams began to take photography seriously, learning techniques from professional photographer Myron Wood. In the 1970s, he was released the book The New West (1974), and a year later was included in the seminal exhibition “New Topographic”. Therefore making this a new big thing, still used today. Today, his works can be found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. Adams has become one of the most profound photographer’s in history and he did make history within his photographer’s.

What is Typologies?

A photographic typology is a study of “types”. That is, a photographic series that prioritizes “collecting” rather than stand-alone images. It’s a powerful method of photography that can be used to reshape the way we perceive the world around us, such as photographing buildings and certain types of windows as a collective and done in a group.

Typologies

 A system used for putting things into groups according to how they are similar : the study of how things can be divided into different types. Eg photographing farm houses- multiple of them as a collective group, many of which Adams did use.

What was the new topographic a reaction to?

The stark, beautifully printed images of the mundane but oddly fascinating topography was both a reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world around them, and a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental.

What is the meaning of New Topographic?

New topographic was a term coined by William Jenkins in 1975 to describe a group of American photographers (such as Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose pictures had a similar banal aesthetic, in that they were formal, mostly black and white prints of the urban landscape.

Robert Adams

Robert Adams is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to prominence in the mid-1970s through his book The New West and his participation in the exhibition New Topographic: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape in 1975.

He looked at aesthetically pleasing photos. He was an environmentalist and usually photographed landscapes and natural enjoinment – similar to Ansel Adams, however they have no relation to each other.

Robert Adams is an American photographer best known for his images of the American West. Offering solemn meditations on the landscapes of California, Colorado, and Oregon, Adams’s black-and-white photos document the changes wrought by humans upon nature.

When should you use exposure bracketing?

Exposure bracketing is where you take a sequence of photographs with different exposure levels, and then blend them together to create a photograph with a much higher dynamic range. It gives you all the details you will ever need in your photographs so you can create the exact image you had in mind.

if the scene has a high level of contrast, or you’re just really not sure that your exposure settings are even in the right ballpark, adding to the number of bracketed shots or setting a higher exposure compensation value increases the exposure range the camera captures for a wider range to choose, therefore it should be used every time your trying to achieve this certain style of photography.

What is HDR in image?

In photography, HDR stands for high dynamic range. Dynamic range is simply the range of the lightest tones to the darkest tones within a photo. Put another way it’s a measure of the light intensities from the highlights to the shadows.

What is the difference between exposure bracketing and HDR?

AEB stands for Auto-Exposure Bracketing. It is the method used to obtain HDR photos. It consists in taking several photos of the same scene at different exposure levels. HDR, High Dynamic Range, is the technique that superimposes the different photos to create a new, final photo.

I am going to try to recreate his romanticism and landscape photos.

As well as taking photographs the storm that affected jersey and here are some of the examples I am going to go off.

Adams inspired me because he takes nature into a different perspective and I want to recrate the aesthetic beauty that he used to capture in photography and see how I can analysis his photos to do the same with mine.

Areas to visit and document…

• cliff-paths
• beaches
• sand dunes
• fields
• country lanes and paths
• woods
• valleys
• SSI

One of the key techniques that Adams applied 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.

So I am going to apply this and many of his techquines to try and replicate similar photos to Adams.

Here is some of my ideas.

Edited in Lightroom.

Origin of Ansel Adams

Ansel Easton Adams was born February 20, 1902, in San Francisco, California. His family came to California from New England, having migrated from Ireland in the early 1700s. His grandfather founded a prosperous lumber business, which Adams’ father eventually inherited. Adams is most known for his stunning photos of the American wilderness.

Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. Ansel’s photography is known for its realist style. Rather than using a pictorialism style. Adams’s career spans over seven decades and a wide range of subject matter, including portraits, still life’s and the landscapes for which he is most famous.

 Visualization

Ansel Adams describes it as the ability to see the scene you photograph and recreate in your mind, relying on the information you receive from the scene and on your developing intentions that you picture inside your head and the way you take the photo can resemble you as a person as your the one who pictured it to be or look a certain way.

A Legacy exhibition is a comprehensive survey of Adams’ artistic career which he is famous for and made loads of money from it.

What is Ansel Adams famous for?

Ansel 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. He outlines the beauty within America with the way he looked at art and his perspective towards it.

Here is one of his quotes.

This quote shows us how and why he loved photography. He perceived them in a way of a beauty and such natural photos. He didn’t go over the top and just took photos of a his natural setting.

Adams assisted Beaumont Newhall and David McAlpin in forming the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in 1940.

Group f/64

This was created when Ansel Adams and Willard Van Dyke, an apprentice of Edward Weston, decided to organize some of their photographers for the purposes of promoting an aesthetic principle.

Where landscape artists used colour and brushstrokes to show the beauty of the places that became part of the National Park System, many of Ansel’s photographs were minimalist, shot in black and white using sharp contrast and deep focus. Ansel’s photography is known for its realist which also relates to romanticism and sums it all up in nutshell.

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 and there known as zones.

Analysing Adams photos

Many of Adams photos have either balance or symmetry but mostly balance as its a landscape with some elements of romanticism in them. He goes into a lot of depth in his photos and shows us beautiful, aesthetic nature. The mid ground are usually all in line and the background are usually calm with dark colours. The scale of each photograph is large. It shows a massive background and loads of different elements to be looked at, not all drawn or focused on one thing as it has a wide variety of things in the image which is what makes it so interesting and unique. The light intensity of Adams photos are usually quiet dark colours such as grey black and white, usually not using many colours, the temperature is cold and intense. the colours are cold and the effects of these colours are a lot as it sums up the whole picture. There are quiet a lot of shadows in his images as they are all quiet dark colours. It has a strength  evoke emotion and energy, reflect mood, and give a narrative to images. The texture seems to be quiet smooth with some edges and corner because of the landscape photography and the surface is very detailed. Last but not least his tonal values are quiet low as shown in the image below.

Orgin of landscape

Originating between 1826 and 1827, landscape photography commonly involves daylight photography of natural features of land, sky and waters, at a distance. This type of photography captures many elements of formalism within the composition, such as line, shape, colour, depth and texture. These images may aim to capture the essence and presence of nature around us that others may miss however it can also focus on documenting the disturbances in that specific area.

Landscape emerged as an art genre in Western Culture during the Renaissance period in the 16th century, an era that was trying influence a more modern, art appreciating society. Linear perspective was an advancement where artists were able to move towards a more realistic portrayal of an environment.

Common characteristics of 18th-century art in Europe include forms that give the impression of elegance as well as a renewed interest in classical antiquity and a desire to break free from tradition. Movements from Europe such as the Rococo, Neoclassical, and Romanticism were most prominent at this time.

John Constable

Born in East Bergholt in Suffolk, John Constable (1776 – 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition.

Constable was one of the first artists of the Romantic movement to create landscape paintings drawn directly from nature. He inspired artists to work directly from everyday life and use nature as the main subject of their painting as he couldn’t use a camera he had to draw/paint the ideas that he thought or seen.

What did John Constable’s landscapes represent?

His landscapes represent an astonishing capacity to represent natural appearance particularly the dramatic effects of stormy skies and mountain’s. Such as this..

Constable’s most famous painting, The Hay Wain (1821). 

Constable is famous for his landscapes. He made many open air sketches, using these as a basis for his large exhibition paintings, which were worked up in the London studio today.

Landscape photography shows the spaces within the world, Landscape photographs typically capture the beauty of nature but can also focus on human made features such as buildings’ and/or disturbances of landscapes.

Romantic landscapes are typically more about the subjective feelings of the artist, than an objective record of the observable world.

For the example the artist Ansel Adams.

Ansel Easton Adams was born February 20, 1902, in San Francisco, California. His family came to California from New England, having migrated from Ireland in the early 1700s. His grandfather founded a prosperous lumber business, which Adams’ father eventually inherited. Adams is most known for his stunning photos of the American wilderness.

Comparing romanticism v landscape

A heightened interest in nature and landscape, based on subjective experience rather than scientific objectivity, also characterized the movement. Landscapes of the sublime remote, dramatic, and even dangerous provided inspiration for the Romantics in literature, music, and art.

Romanticism focuses on the sublime, using high contrast and intense emotion to convey its subjects. Realism focuses on detailed, sometimes gritty depictions of reality. Both movements were important in America and Europe

Here are some of my images of landscape.

What is Romanticism?

The Age of Romanticism (1800-1900ish)

https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-21-spring-2011/romanticism-gets-real

Romanticism is an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. 

Romanticism began as a late eighteenth-century philosophy that embraced imagination, emotion, and the unknown. Affecting history, literature, religion, art, utopian and dream like state and home life, Romanticism offered an escape from the stresses of the early Industrial Revolution.

The Romantics use the concept of slavery to support economic reform. They attempt, through their depictions of slaves, to convey the concept of alterity which could strengthen the individual’s self-awareness as well as any ethical awareness to the person or to someone else.

What are the 5 characteristics of Romanticism?

What are the 5 characteristics of American romanticism? Romanticism is marked by a focus on individualism, an emphasis on nature, emotion over reason, freedom of form, and an exploration of the Gothic and unknown.

This type of photography can be found in films and art today, such as: Beauty and the beast. Belle is full of innocence because she is young and loving, she sees nothing wrong in life when in reality there is problems starting with the beast.

Photography is typically representational while painting has can be entirely abstract and go anywhere as you can paint anything with any colours and have so many possibilities. Paintings aren’t constrained to portray what things actually look like however they can interpret scenes, emotions, or feelings as they desire, whereas a photo is the complete opposite you get he whole moment captured in a photograph which is why photography is more more popular in modern times because it allows for capturing moments quickly and accurately, making it a preferred method for documenting events, landscapes, and people as well as emotions.

Romanticism spread throughout Europe in the 19th century and developed as an artistic, literary and intellectual movement . Enlightenment, a European movement of the 18th century in which ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were a world view that gained popularity in the West.

The Industrial Revolution was the transition from creating goods by hand to using machines. Its start and end are widely debated by scholars, but the period generally spanned from about 1760 to 1840.

William blake

 Blake believed in spiritual and political freedom and often wrote about these themes in his works. He worked on creating beautiful images and revolving this around freedom and expression.

Blake was born in Soho, London, in 1757, the son of a hosier. From an early age he saw religious visions. His artistic talents led his father to send him to Henry Pars’ drawing school at the age of 10, where he learnt to copy from prints and plaster casts, and in 1772 he was apprenticed to the engraver James Basire.

Here is some of his work.

These images show that Blake wanted to emphasize the importance of nature and the imagination as expressions of a deeper reality. His style and ideas are transcendental in that they go beyond the ordinary way of perceiving and describing reality, suggesting that there is a deeper and richer realm which is hinted at by nature and the imagination, such as the first photo above as it appears to be a women, however we are not sure. Its mainly blue, yellow and green colours. Although we aren’t too sure what’s going on there is sense of romanticism in this photo.

The Sublime

In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. Basically referring to photographs’ of beauty and loath.

What is the sublime in British romanticism?

The sublime is closely linked with the English Romanticism – artists and writers. In particular those works of painting or poetry that celebrate the majesty and overwhelming power of the natural world.

Its an artistic effect productive of the strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling.

Here are some examples..

These photos are aesthetically pleasing, calming and are generally made for you to hang up in your house as its a nice photo, nice vie and is relaxing. Most people would have something like their in their house as its the perfect photograph to be hung in and in view for your family and friends. However you could also say that they are mysterious and have a deeper meaning than you think which could make you wonder about the origin of the photo and why it was taken.

These photos romanticism and sublime have a depth that they go into and revel a lot on each other. The scale of sublime is clearly a large format camera and pay close attention to detail as that’s clearly what the artist is trying to achieve. The light and colours of both styles of photos are dark and mysterious, not revealing a lot about itself and making you question and wonder. the texture of both photos look quiet rough and not so smooth as some were taken in the 18th century. Lastly the sublime photos have loads of shadows and corners to go into , not very bright whereas the first photo on romanticism has more rough colours although there not bright colours they are still quiet dull but have more yellow, green and blue shades in the photos.

These are the aspects of photos you should look our for sublime and romanticism images in photography. These aspects’ are important because they highlight the important bits in a photograph and show you the best/most interesting bits.

John constable

Born in East Bergholt in Suffolk, John Constable (1776 – 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romantic tradition.

Constable was one of the first artists of the Romantic movement to create landscape paintings drawn directly from nature. He inspired artists to work directly from everyday life and use nature as the main subject of their painting as he couldn’t use a camera he had to draw/paint the ideas that he thought or seen.