Ansel Adams is a landscape photographer and environmentalist, grew up amid the sand dunes of the golden gate. He takes photos of cliffs and vast open landscapes. When he was young the aftershock of an earthquake broke his nose. He took a big majority of his famous photos in the ‘John Muir Trail’. He grew recognition as a photographer in the 1930s, due to his beautiful photos and sheer commitment to the profession. He is now a world famous photographer who many say is one of the greats. He died on the 22nd of April, 1984.

Adams, along with Fred Archer, developed what is known as the zone system. The zone system is a method of relating and controlling exposure to the film, and development. This technique is copied very often, but not many people have mastered it.

F/64 was a group of west coast photographers including Ansel Adams. The group was founded in 1932. The name refers to the aperture in the camera being very small which made a very deep depth of field and the highest possible sharpness in the photos – the name relates to the groups philosophy. The group advocated for what they called “straight photography” which was pretty much photos which the deepest depth of field, the sharpest possible, a very rich tonal range and a sharp focus – without manipulation. The group was aiming to create a movement away from pictorialism. Pictorialism was the soft, painting style photography that was used by many early 20th century photographers. As a group they generally focused on natural landscapes, using national parks to achieve this (Yosemite etc).

Ansel Adams took photos because he wanted to capture what he saw. Originally, he took photos documenting his travels and his expeditions but he thought they lacked the soul and the power that he really saw in the scene. He developed a technique called visualisation to capture what his minds eye saw. The first time he did this, he used a strong red filter to darken the sky and create an unprecedented mood and atmosphere in his images. Photos with this much tonal range and such deliberate exposure had never been seen before.

I personally love his photography, it is inspiring and makes me feel small seeing the vast landscapes filled with huge mountains and wide, running rivers. The contrast is amazing, and the focal points really stand out. His photos have inspired me to look at the Jersey cliffs and think about how I can make my photos look like his, in regards of contrast, lighting and the vastness of his scenes. His photos often mainly consist of dark tones, often silhouettes, and it makes the scene look powerful, like there could likely be a thunderstorm, although it was likely sunny. Often the only midtones visible in his photos are in the sky. To conclude, his work really stands out to me.

Image Analysis

This is a film photo of a wide river leaving to a tall, snowy mountain range. The genre of this style of photography is landscape. The mise-en-scene presents the sky, filled with dark, dense and contrasting clouds sitting above some snowy mountains. The mountains are often a solid black, perfectly contrasting the snow. Below this, is a river that leads to the mountains. The colour/tone in this image very dark and ominous. For example, if you look at the base of the mountains, or the trees to left of the image, there is hardly any texture visible. However, contrasting this is the river and the sky, which both have mid and light tones to oppose the extremely dark tones of the rest of the image, and stand out. The photographer (Ansel Adams), has clearly used leading lines, which you can see: the river clearly snakes up to the mountain range. The mountain range’s edges also lead up to the highest peak. The use of light in this image is quite varied ranging from dark, to mid, to light. I have circled the most extremes of these points of light. The depth of field is very deep, the whole image is in focus.

This image using lighting with a very high amount of contrast – very deep blacks and very bright whites; the photo has a very big tonal range. The deep blacks present in the mountains provide strong negative space that almost frames the moon and the lit part of the image. The aperture was likely very high like f/22 because of the very wide depth of field. I would believe that Ansel Adams used his visualisation technique and zone system in order to achieve the high contrast and deep blacks – he probably used a colour filter. The ASA was definitely as low as possible to minimise grain, but since it was film it was likely quite tricky to decide which roll to bring on the trip – or he brought lots of rolls and decided for each shot. The amount of texture is astoundingly high because of the high levels of contrast he managed to achieve. There are lots of harsh lines in the image – like the cliff to the left that is solid black contrasts very solidly against the sky and the other quite bright cliff.

He probably wanted to capture the image with quite an air of mystery – the cliff on the left and the shadows on the right almost shroud the cliff in the middle and the moon. He probably felt a sense of awe and tried his best to capture that – capturing the size of the cliff and the detail on the moon. This was likely one of the first photographs that was thought out so clearly and captured so deliberately.

Exposure Bracketing

Exposure bracketing is a method of taking photos where you take three photos of the same scene. You use three different levels of exposure

• Underexposed
• Correctly exposed
• Overexposed

This method allows for a very high dynamic range as you merge the three images and the part of each image that is best exposed will be the most prominent in the image. This method is normally how vivid, perfectly exposed images are created.

Some modern digital cameras have AEB (Auto Exposure Bracketing). This feature basically does it all for you, taking three photos with different levels of exposure. Its usually a setting that you have to turn on.