Ansel Adams Research

Ansel Adams an American landscape and environmentalist that focuses on black and white landscape photos of the American West. He was apart of the founding of the group f/64. An association that is a firm believer of "pure" photography which means looking at having a sharp focus and using the full tonal range within your image.

Adams and a man named Fred Archer developed an effective technique for image making called the "Zone System". It allowed the individual to determine a deeper understanding of how a tonal range can be recorded during an exposing, developing and printing an image. Within his photography you can see the clarity and understanding that this technique has helped established in his images. 

On another post i've found an example of an image that has been annotated and prepped for evaluation of the tonal range for developing and printing for the final image. Along with that i have gathered a description that highlights what each number correlates towards within frame of the image and a description of how to make an adjustment for that section. This can be found on my other blog post titled "Zone System understanding".

Adam's work has been focused on helping to support environmental conservation. It has been a lifelong mission of his to help in expanding the National Park system. At the age of 12 he was given his first camera and visited Yosemite National Park. This is where his passion for the National Park system begun. He was later on hired by the US Department of the Interior to make photographic work of National Parks which was truly sensational for him considering his huge advocacy to help the environment. His work was inspiring and was a key factor in helping to expand the national park system to what it is today. For his hard work he was awarded in 1980 the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Adams was a generational talent that change photography and give it such status and legitimacy in modern day society. He was apart of the push in getting photography into the New York Museum of Modern Art which gave photography its major stability to grow in the institutional community of modern art. 

Overall, Ansel Adams changed photography drastically and provided many of the techniques and strategies that inspire many photographers work to this day. For me i found his work 'Yosemite and the Range of Light' riveting as it opened my eyes to truly understanding the simplicity and control he had behind the camera. He was able to take an image that anybody could capture upon visiting Yosemite National Park, but turn it into something very moving due to the light balance he can create within the selection of images. Furthermore, for my next week of shooting and research i will try slowing down my image making process in order to really understand and get to grips with the settings and functionality of my camera.