Sean Hudson 10/03/11 Ansel Adams Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist.

Adams was born in San Francisco, California on February 20, 1902. Adams was born to a upper-class family and he was an only child. Adams was a hyperactive child and he did not have many friends growing up. Due to his inattentiveness in school, his father pulled him out of school completely when he was 12 years old. His father instead hired several private tutors to teach Ansel.Ansels first passion was music. He taught himself how to play the piano by age 12 and wanted to pursue music as a profession. However when Ansel first visited Yosemite National Park in 1916, a new interest started to form and that was photography. His father gave him his first camera during that trip and Ansel became hooked on photographing nature. At age 17, Adams joined the Sierra Club, a group dedicated to preserving the natural worlds wonders and resources. Ansels first photographs were published in 1921 and they were pictures of Yosemite. During the mid 1920s Adams used a variety of lenses to get different effects, but eventually rejected this for a more realistic approach which relied more heavily on sharp focus, heightened contrast, precise exposure, and darkroom craftsmanship. In 1927 Adams produced his first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras. This portfolio was his first success as a photographer. In 1928, Ansel gave up his ambitions to become a professional musician and instead focused on photography. Between 1929 and 1942, Adams's work matured and he became more established. In the course of his 60-year career, the 1930s were the years he was most productive and experimental with his works. Despite success, Adams felt he had not unlocked his full potential. He decided to broaden his subject matter to include still life and close-up photos, and to achieve higher quality by "visualizing" each image before taking it. He emphasized the use of small apertures and long exposures in natural light, which created sharp details with a wide range of focus. In 1932 Adams and other photographers formed Group f/64. Their focus was pure photography which mean, no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form. In the 1930s, Adams began to deploy his photographs in the cause of wilderness preservation. In part, he was inspired by the increasing desecration of Yosemite Valley by commercial development. He created a limited-edition book in 1938, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, as part of the Sierra Club's efforts to secure the designation of Sequoia and Kings Canyon as national parks. This book and his testimony before Congress played a vital role in the success of the effort, and Congress designated the area as a National Park in 1940. In 1940, Ansel put together A Pageant of Photography, the most important and largest photography show in the West to date, attended by millions of visitors. Adams also began his first serious stint of teaching in 1941 at the Art Center School of Los Angeles. In 1984, Adams died of a heart attack in the ICU at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, California, he was 82 years old.

Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, 1927.

Rose and Driftwood, San Francisco, California, 1932

Moon and Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, California, 1960

The three pictures above are all photographs by the photographer Ansel Adams. All three pictures are from different eras in Adams life. The first photograph, Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, was one of the first professional photographs that he took. The second photograph, Rose and Driftwood, is a photograph during the time Ansel Adams was an established photographer. The final photograph, Moon and Half Dome, is from Ansels later years as a photographer. All photos share some key features of Ansels signature style, but there are notable differences as Ansels style developed as he got older and gained experience.

The three photos share signature features of Ansels style, but they also contain differences between them. Firstly, all three photos are of nature. Ansels photography focused completely on the beauty and magnificence of nature, especially that in Yosemite National Park. To emphasize this beauty, Adams tried to focus on the contrast of the shadows in the scenes. What also adds to the drama in the photographs is that they are all in black and white. While the first two photographs had to be in black and white given the time frame they were taken in, the last photo could have been in color as colored photography was taking off during the 1960s. This just shows that Ansel wanted to stick with his signature style of photography. The black and white color also adds to the drama because the blackness of the shadows clashes with the brightness of the light. In the two latter pictures one can see the dramatic effect the contrast of the shadow has on the picture. It draws out a sense of awe, especially in the case of Moon and Half Dome, as it is a whole scene. The difference between the two latter pictures and the first picture is that, while they both show contrast, the two latter photographs show the use of Adamss technique of using long exposures in natural light. In Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Adams used a strong red filter to create a black sky. This means he had to doctor the photo in a darkroom to get this effect. In the two photographs that he took later in his life, he took the pictures and got the dramatic effect by lengthening the exposure time and using the natural light of the environment. This in turn gives the two latter photos more emotion because the contrast between the highlights and the shadows is even greater compared to the first photo. Another difference between the photographs is that in Rose and Driftwood, Ansel shows the contrast between two different textures close up. While the wood in the background looks rough, the rose in the foreground looks soft and delicate, bringing more emotion to the picture.