Ansel Adams

I have mixed feelings about the value of studying the work of other photographers. On the one hand you can get a great deal of inspiration from the work of others but at the risk of becoming a copyist rather than a photographer. On the other hand  is the best way to encourage a photographer to take great pictures of Yosemite to tell him to study the work of Ansel Adams or to go to Yosemite and take photographs. There is also a risk that famous photographers reach the point that what ever they take is seen necessarily as 'good' or even 'great'. The images are judged by reference to the photographer rather than there intrinsic qualities.

There is no denying that Ansel Adams produced some stunning images and a trawl through his work finds many examples. I visited the web site www.ansel-adams.com.. There can be seen such images as Yosemite Valley Thunderstorm (1945); White House Ruin (1960); Golden Gate Headlands (1950) and Moon and Half Dome (1960) plus my particular favourite  Jeffrey Pine (1940). All show Adam's sense of composition and drama and his use of the whole range of tones in black and white add an almost magical quality. The 'Jeffrey Pine" is, for me,  the best example of his skills. The texture of the tree in the photograph is such that you feel that you can reach out and feel its roughness and age.

In 1941 the National Park Service commissioned  Adams to create a photo mural for the Department of the Interior Building in Washington, DC. The theme was to be nature as exemplified and protected in the U.S. National Parks. The project was suspended following America's entry into the Second World War but was never resumed. The photographs that Adams did take are in the National Archives and can be seen at www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams. They include many landscapes from the National Parks but also some close ups of the Boulder Dam and surprisingly, for me anyway, some portraits of Native Americans.


Many of the images are of the high quality that we expect from Adams but others are less impressive and some are poor by modern day standards.  In the first category there is The Tetons - Snake River (archive no 79AAG-1) that is perhaps one of his better known works. Whilst in the latter is Death Valley National Monument (archive no 79AAD-1) and Church Taos Pueblo New Mexico (archive no 79AAQ-2). His portraits suggest that he was more comfortable photographing wide open spaces than humans. The portraits have a woodenness that suggests that there was little rapport between photographer and subject.


What is my personal learning from looking at the work of a great landscape photographer? I am not sure at this stage because I need to think about what I saw. The exceptional element in Adams work is the creation of texture and depth through the use of the whole tonal range and this is something that I would wish to emulate in my own monochromatic work. His composition and use of space is good although sometimes you are left feeling that there was a better shot there somewhere.  Yosemite Valley Thunderstorm, for example, leaves me with a sense of being 'blocked in' by the solidity of the mountains either side and this feeling is not helped by the lighting on the two opposite faces. I feel as though I want to be further away so that the thunderous sky is more dominant in the image and to give a sense of the grandeur of the scene that we are being shown.