The Impact of Ansel Adams - Paper

The Impact of Ansel Adams The evolution of photography, from the very beginning to the modern technology we have today, is largely due to a few select specialists that took the matter into their own hands. Many discoveries were made about photography during the late 1800’s and into the 1900’s, but none greater than the discoveries of Ansel Adams. Ansel Adams made a huge impact on photography because of his technological advances, environmental work, and how he won the hearts of many with his beautiful works of art. Ansel Adams was a very talented photographer who captured beautiful photographs from day one. He had many accomplishments in his lifetime such as creating the Zone System, saving National Parks, working as an environmentalist and more. Adams was born into an upper-class San Francisco family in 1902. He was an only child and as a boy, he had no friends (“Ansel Adams”). He grew up among sand dunes and the sea cliffs, developing a love for nature very early in his life. Ansel Adams became interested in piano before he started photographing. Adams had an eidetic memory, causing his to excel in learning and memorizing notes (Alinder, 45). Piano playing caused him to meet his future wife, Virginia Best, in Yosemite later in his years but Photography won him over his music career. Ansel Adams specialized in black-and-white photography. Some of his most famous black-and-whites are taken at Yosemite. His uses of contrast and differences in texture are captivating and different. No other photographer of his time could capture the images he did. Yosemite Valley, Thunderstorm, Moon and Half Dome, and Monolith, The Face of Half Dome are all great examples of his Yosemite work. Ansel Adams spent a majority of his life visiting Yosemite National Park. When he was only seventeen; he joined the Sierra Club, a Yosemite Defense Association founded by John Muir in 1892 (Alinder, 28) Soon, when Adams realized that he was a good photographer and could

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