What makes ansel adams special

These early years also afforded him an opportunity to meet some of the great conservationists of the day, among them Joseph N. LeConte, William E. Colby and Stephen T. Mather, first director of the National Park Service. Ansel continued working summers at the Le Conte Lodge until Through the s he made many climbs in the Sierra high country, including several first ascents. Through these early high-country experiences, Ansel became aware of aesthetic qualities in the wilderness that he had not anticipated.

Clark…I was suddenly arrested in the long crunching push up the ridge by an exceedingly pointed awareness of the light …. I saw more clearly than I have ever seen before or since the minute detail of the grasses, the clusters of sand shifting in the wind, the small flotsam of the forest, the motion of the high clouds streaming above the peaks.

There area no words to convey the moods of those moments. By this time his photography was becoming increasingly important, exercising a claim on his time and energy that was competing with a beckoning career as a concert pianist. One spring day in he perched precariously on a cliff with his camera and the unwieldy photographic glass plates of the day. He hoped to capture an imposing perspective of the face of Half Dome, the snow-laden high country and a crystal-clear sky. Only two unexposed plates remained.

With one he made a conventional exposure. Suddenly, he realized that he wanted an image with more emotional impact. But that was the first time I realized how the print was going to look—what I now call visualization—and was actually thinking about the emotional effect of the image…I began to visualize the black rock and deep sky. I really wanted to give it a monumental, dark quality.

So I used the last plate I had with a No. In Ansel met Albert Bender, a perceptive and generous patron of the arts. Bender took to the young photographer at once. Recognizing an extraordinary talent, he proposed that Ansel issue a collection of his mountain photographs. The result, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras , was stunningly beautiful. He also found a degree of financial security, enough so that the next year he married his Yosemite sweetheart, Virginia Best, daughter of the painter Harry Best, who had a studio in the valley.

For years young Ansel had come to the Best home to practice on their piano. In Virginia he found someone sharing his interests in both music and the natural world. He made the photographs to illustrate a Mary Austin text on the Taos Pueblo, receiving equal billing with the author.

This was unusual for a photographer in those days and a measure of how rapidly he was distinguishing himself. Yet he was still ambivalent about the future. Many of his friends insisted that photography, unlike music, was not capable of expressing the finer emotions of art. But there was persuasive counter-evidence.

On one of his visits to Taos he met the noted photographer Paul Strand. But some independent spirits such as Edward Weston were taking the opposite tack, producing sharply focused pictures and printing on glossy papers. Subterfuge becomes impossible. Every defect is exposed, all weakness equally with strength.

There is a reason. The machine does not do the whole thing. Looking over many of his negatives, he saw he would have to start over. The number designates a very small lens aperture capable of producing an image with maximum definition.

By landscapes, I mean every physical aspect of a region—weather, soil, wildflowers, mountain peaks—and its effect on the psyche and physical appearance of the people. In Adams met the old master Alfred Stieglitz, who exerted a further clarifying influence on his artistic direction. I would not have believed before I met him that a man could be so psychically and emotionally powerful.

Adams was the first new photographer Stieglitz had introduced to the public at An American Place since Paul Strand in Lovers of wilderness echoed this feeling. What does matter is that the mutuality was important. Ansel Adams in honor of their irrepressible playwright-photographer. Then someone nominated Ansel, which precipitated a humorous situation. Ansel insisted that Virginia , having done a fine job on the board, should remain on it. In the end Ansel was elected.

He quickly proved such a valuable member that he repeatedly was reelected by the club membership until his voluntary retirement in Adams was chosen in to represent the club at a national and state parks conference in Washington to be attended by the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture. The club wanted him to present its proposal for a wilderness park in the Kings River Sierra, feeling that his photographs of the area would be very persuasive.

The Sierra Club was mindful of the key role photography had played in the creation of earlier parks. For much of the mechanics of making a photograph, AA codified it, and developed a system whereby we can look at a scene, imagine the image that we want to present from that, and then execute it. Oct 29, 6. Messages: 1, I had very little interest in photography as art until I saw his photos.

They captivated me. They inspired me to travel out west and see these beautiful places. I developed a love of the western landscape, hiking and camping through it and just enjoying it. And, yes, photographing it. Ironically, although it is truly beautiful, Yosemite is ruined for me. It will never look as beautiful as St Ansel's photos of it. That said, some of his most revered shots do nothing for me Moonrise Over Hernandez being the prime example.

And despite being an engineer and somewhat of a nerd, I have NO interest in becoming so consumed by the technical aspects that St Ansel popularized. Sure I meter along the lines of the Zone System, but it's more of a seat-of-the-pants approach. I've read the books, but absorbed it more through osmosis than by design. Oct 29, 7. Last edited by a moderator: Oct 29, Oct 29, 8. Greatness is one thing but reverence is another. Adams "reverence" probably comes from the Zone System and his teaching which travels through photographers and enthusiasts down to the general public.

Whenever anyone has a following and disciples, they tend to become more "famous" than someone who quietly goes about their business. Oct 29, 9. Messages: 4, There are a lot of interesting details about it here: there was a url link here which no longer exists Seriously speaking, I think his appeal is due to many things.

For me, he's like the grandpa of photography that everyone had: he showed you how to load a reel, process your film, understand how to tweak the process, etc. I think he is responsible for a lot of amateur enthusiasm about photography, and we know how much amateur photo boomed in the post-war years.

Regarding his status as an artist, I would say without any sarcasm that his pictures "feel good. Pictorially, his work was very aesthetics-driven, and whilst he partook in the reaction against 19thC pictorialism, his work is nevertheless very close to representational painting: it is about painstaking efforts to make a vivid impression on the viewer by the use of pictorial means.

Ansel Adams is one of the titans of photographic history. When I started as a photographer, I was primarily interested in landscape photography. I studied and consumed the work of Adams.

What drew me most to his work was the minimalism, zen, and the sense of calm from his photographs. Furthermore, I began to appreciate nature more from him. During his entire life, he canvassed to support the wilderness— politically, and through his photographs.

He saw photography as a form of art. You also had to spend time in the darkroom, to bring to life what you saw and felt in real life. We need to use post-processing techniques to create a certain aesthetic, mood, and emotion in our photographs.

There is a fine line, however. I think all of us as photographers have a certain vision about the photos we would like to make.

Try to pre-visualize the photos you want to make before you take them. In landscape photography, position is everything. Where you are situated in respect to your landscape, will determine your perspective, the mood of the photograph, as well as the composition.

I know some of the most epic landscape photographers will hike with 50 pounds of gear, just to get the best position. They will use wide-angle lenses, and venture into places nobody else dares to go. Know how to move your feet. By moving your feet and getting a better position, you will create more unique and creative images. Not only that, but practice crouching, moving to the left, to the right, and sometimes even your tippy-toes.

Try to hike to get very high perspectives, and sometimes lie on your stomach or back to get very low perspectives. As photographers, we forget that art is more about the emotion it evokes in the viewer, not how it looks. In photography, it is easy to forget this point.

The camera is known for being the most descriptive form of image-making. However if we want to make more effective images, we should focus on photographing how a scene feels— not how it looks. Merely clicking the camera and making a simple print from the negative would have created a wholly different—and ordinary—photograph.

People have asked me why the sky is so dark, thinking exactly in terms of the literal. But the dark sky is how it felt. When it comes to your photography, what kind of emotions are you trying to evoke in your viewer?

Are you trying to show them beauty, sadness, melancholy, excitement, or misery in your photos? How do your photos make you feel? What kind of feeling do you want your viewer to walk away with? We can create a certain emotion or feeling in our photos by different methods and techniques. If we are photographing landscapes, we should look for the light, mist, smoke, fog, or other natural splendors.

And the way we post-process our photos afterwards will change the emotion dramatically. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Landscape Legend Lightroom Presets : Save time and get amazing results with our presets! Landscape Legend is the most comprehensive collection of Lightroom presets specifically created for landscape and nature photos.

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