Ansel Adams
Ansel Adams, Half Dome and Clouds (Upside-down Photograph), Yosemite National Park, 1916
As a fundamental environmentalist Ansel Adams played an extremely important role in the development of nature and landscape photography. Through his first photograph, done at the age of fourteen with a Kodak Box Brownie given to him by his parents, Half Dome and Clouds (Upside-down Photograph) 1916, Adams noted that there was a lacked crispness, as well as lack of dimensions, within his photograph. It was because of the lack of purity and crispness within Adams’ first photograph that drove him to develop a better way in which he could capture the raw beauty of nature. By searching for ways to better nature and landscape photography, Adams construct the Zone System and Group f/64; which helped influence the development and purity of nature and landscape photography.
As a young boy, Ansel Adams suffered from chronic illnesses and thus was forced to be indoors for most of his adolescent life. As noted within Adam’s autobiography, he states how it was due to the time he spent indoors that fueled his fire to be outside with nature, “I wanted to run down the beach in the sun, rain, or fog and expend the pent-up physical energy that simply fermented within me” (Ansel Adams: An Autobiography 11). As Adams grew older his love for nature blossomed. However, still suffering from chronic illnesses, he had to live his outdoor experiences through books. Within his autobiography, he states how there was one book in particular that fueled his passion for nature stronger than imaginable, “In April 1916, I was in bed again, this time with a cold. Aunt Mary gave me her copy of In the Hunt of Sierras by J.M Hutchings, published 1886. I became hopelessly enthralled with the descriptions and illustrations of Yosemite…I devoured every word and pored over the pages many times” (Ansel
As a fundamental environmentalist Ansel Adams played an extremely important role in the development of nature and landscape photography. Through his first photograph, done at the age of fourteen with a Kodak Box Brownie given to him by his parents, Half Dome and Clouds (Upside-down Photograph) 1916, Adams noted that there was a lacked crispness, as well as lack of dimensions, within his photograph. It was because of the lack of purity and crispness within Adams’ first photograph that drove him to develop a better way in which he could capture the raw beauty of nature. By searching for ways to better nature and landscape photography, Adams construct the Zone System and Group f/64; which helped influence the development and purity of nature and landscape photography.
As a young boy, Ansel Adams suffered from chronic illnesses and thus was forced to be indoors for most of his adolescent life. As noted within Adam’s autobiography, he states how it was due to the time he spent indoors that fueled his fire to be outside with nature, “I wanted to run down the beach in the sun, rain, or fog and expend the pent-up physical energy that simply fermented within me” (Ansel Adams: An Autobiography 11). As Adams grew older his love for nature blossomed. However, still suffering from chronic illnesses, he had to live his outdoor experiences through books. Within his autobiography, he states how there was one book in particular that fueled his passion for nature stronger than imaginable, “In April 1916, I was in bed again, this time with a cold. Aunt Mary gave me her copy of In the Hunt of Sierras by J.M Hutchings, published 1886. I became hopelessly enthralled with the descriptions and illustrations of Yosemite…I devoured every word and pored over the pages many times” (Ansel
Bibliography: Adams, Ansel. Camera and Lens. [S.l.]: Morgan and Morgan, 1970. Print. Adams, Ansel, Andrea Gray Stillman, and William A. Turnage. Our National Parks. Boston: Little, Brown, 1992. Print. Adams, Ansel, and Mary Street Alinder. Ansel Adams, an Autobiography. Boston: Little, Brown, 1985. Print. Sullivan, Robert. America the Beautiful: A Photographic Journey, Coast to Coast-- and beyond. New York: Life, 2007. Print.