Production for Visual Communicators

Principle 5 – The Experts

Ansel Adams is a famous photographer who was born in San Francisco, California 20^th February 1902, he was an only child and he died on the 22^nd April 1984. He spent a lot of time in Yosemite Valley every year from 1916 until his death he began using his Kodak box brownie that his parents brought him for his first camera. After using this camera on his walks and exploring Yosemite Valley this is where his love of photography began. He loved all nature and this was the kind of images he loved to capture, they often showed no sign of mans presence it was all just natural things. In 1932 the F64 group was formed with Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston. The whole idea of this group was the fact that they wanted all of their images to be all in focus so they looked like photographs and not paintings or images with shallow depth of fields. To do this they used apertures of F64 on large format cameras to create sharp images to capture the highest level of detail possible.

http://www.anseladams.com/anseladams_biography_s/51.htm

 

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/adams/adams_monolith_full.html

This is a photograph taken by Ansel Adams in 1927 and is called “Half Dome.” He originally took this image with a yellow K2 filter which was the standard filter at the time. He then decided to forget what it looked like and see what it felt like he had one plate and a strong red filter. At first the sky was bland with no depth and the shadows had no strength, changing the filter made the difference and made the image that he wanted. (Booth 1983, P.10) I think you can always tell his work because of the high quality and time and effort that is involved in it the fact that they are on large format camera at F64 and everything is perfectly sharp and in focus makes these images have more of an impact upon us I think if they were in colour and shallow depth of field they would look nowhere near as good and would be completely different as I think he has his own very distinctive style and that is what I love about his work.

This is another of the images by Ansel Adams, I think the contrast between the black and white is amazing and the detail makes the image to be really striking. I think he has captured the textures really well and there is a nice tonal range within this image. The sky also has texture and because it is on film and in black and white it really adds depth to the image and creates an atmosphere instead of if it was just plain black or white sky.

http://fradinphoto.blogspot.com/2011/02/mimic-2-ansel-adams.html

This is another image by Ansel Adams and was taken in 1934 and is called Lake Near, King Canyon, National Park, California. I think again this really shows his still in photography and the amount of time and effort he put in because not only did he take the images on film he processed and printed them as well so he would have spent a lot of time on each individual image and he would have also only had a certain number of images he could take per film. I really like the level of detail within this image and also the reflection in the water is really striking within the image.

http://www.anseladams.com/Wanda_Lake_Near_Muir_Pass_Kings_Canyon_p/1501301.htm