Ansel Adams is one of the leading Landscape photographers and great artists of the 20th century. The making of the photographs were during 1928 to 1968, in different states of America such as Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Utah.

In his work, he used an extended range of photolithography  which is a method of fabrication of thin film patterns and captures the full scale of the image. 

In one of his books, Photographs of the Southwest, are very powerful and evocative recording massive amounts of detail within the work which is something I want to bring along into my work as I go along into the project.

Adams was born in San Francisco, 1902 during his youth and early adulthood he trained as a pianist, and at the age of fourteen, was when he stared photographing and took his first photographs in Yosemite valley. It wasn't until 1916 where he actually began photographing after a trip to Yosemite National park on a trip with his family, using his new camera he was gifted a kodak Box brownie. 

He created a visual diary a record of where he had been having the photographs pasted onto an album and titling them with a white pen. Adams continued to explore aesthetic and technical elements and values of photography. Images that vary from scenery in a more artistic expressive way  and a more technical way. Whilst composing a photograph from the half dome he was able to imagine what he wanted the finished print to express before he pressed the shutter later on calling this process visualisation.

From here was where his career began and a lifetime devoted to photographing  and devoted to creating images of America's different national parks and different mountain ranges.

Adams was involved in the group Group f/64 which was devoted to the expressive  potential of straight photography. Also celebrating photography and recording ideas as they appear and not to romanticise ideas. As well as a photographer, he was also a teacher and a conservationist. Adams began to photograph ordinary everyday subjects such as pinecone and eucalyptus leaves from the ground , his photographs were characterised from what Adams called the microscopic revelation of the lens.

He lived amongst the area of the Golden gate and the sand dunes, so always surrounded by nature must have been quite inspiring as a photography subject as well and more so inspired his love for being outdoors and photographing as well as being outdoors very often. 

Throughout the six decades if his photographic career Adams has produced a mass amount of photographs and a very remarkable body of work that I have really enjoyed looking at the photographs he has taken. In a way a tribute to American landscape he has grown up in.

These are some of the photographs he has taken, I really like these the different compositions and textures appeal to me as well as it is visually nice photographs with a lot of tonal range and intricate detail.

Although I may not be able to take photographs in the same way I like his idea of working and especially these as there are lots of different textures and contrast between the images which is what I want to do in my project as I find these images quite tranquil and I want to photograph subjects that interest me and that I drawn to.

Visualisation is the concept of interpreting a scene and creating that photograph by clicking the shutter and deciding on the final shot, it includes choosing the most important details and attributes including the framing and highlighting the most important parts of the photograph as well as looking at composition of the photograph. It also includes capturing the mood of the scene which is important.

This is something that Adams said and I really like how he put it and I think it is important to look for the significant in things as sometimes we just look straight past it, to look and explore our surrounding. This is something I have been trying to explore in my photography and look at different shapes and textures and exploring tonal values which is more significant and prominent when shooting in black and white.

In Adams work, he used an emotional response as his subject to make photographs , within his work, he created a feeling of inspiration which is something I want to create in my work and have photographs that I make for myself and that final feeling after making the photograph that I can share with other people.

His earliest serious photographs of the southwest were made around 1928 and his newest ones in 1975, working on a project during a span of time and was working on a definite project over a span of time  Adams found a fresh and unexpected photograph.

The photographs are arranged with flow of meaning rather than time or location. This is similar to how I am sequencing my work and what works best and what doesn't.

"... I see

Many clouds arise.

In front of the sky they lie.

With a good sound

it is thundering nearby."

I have been looking at the photobook Ansel Adams 400 photographs, the book has really intrigued me and has lots of interesting and visually appealing photographs, what I quite enjoy is the way he photographs and how sharp the images are with lots of detail.

The book is chronologically organised chronologically presenting the full range of his work and all his projects from the national parks. It documents the development of his photography through the years and the evolution in style, themes and subjects.

I really like the atmosphere with the clouds and having it in black and white you can see more of the tonal range in the photograph and colours are quite contrasting to one another. In my photography, I want to explore the way Adams photographs and experiment to see how it goes and try out different ways of working. Although Adams worked with a large format camera which is hard to get a hold of I can use my digital camera and try to recreate something in his style of work.

In his work the Sierra is a  constant subject within his work in a way Adams spiritual home  his work transformed geographic reality into an emotional journey and feeling in a way.

Adam took this photograph whilst he was driving south along the highway observing a very intricate and blissful scene that he was able to capture in the east you can see that the moon is rising over distant clouds and there is a contrast between the colours, in this what I quite like is that the clouds look like mountains and it is quite abstract and I like that. The photograph was taken as they approached the village of Hernandez. In the west, the sun was glancing over the church.

In the book of 400 photographs it is said that Adams couldn't find his exposure metre, and as the sun was soon to disappear behind the clouds. Adams knew that the luminance of the moon was 250 candles per square foot and placed it on the value of zone VII of the exposure scale  using the deep yellow filter and exposure set at f/32 although there was no accurate reading  of the shadow foreground values.

As Ansel Adams slowly developed as a photographer, he used a large format camera which allowed a lot of light to enter the lens and allowing a larger view to capture the size of the landscape. Adams utilised a range of lenses allowing different outcome of photographs to be produced by using the large format cameras it allowed an exceptional detail and image quality as well as better amount of control of the focus and perspective allowing better photographs able to be taken.

Different lenses Adams used was the telescope lens which allowed diverse perspectives and compositions in his photographs and things such as tilt functions which creates very detailed images as they also had a large depth of field.

These are some of the photographs from his book which I really enjoyed, I quite like the images of the clouds and the different cloud formations and the compositions of the photographs interest me.

In 1941, Adams was commissioned by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ikes to photograph the national parks and monuments for them to be displayed  in the Washington DC headquarters. Adams visited many of the national parks outside of California and produced many negatives at this point, it was a massive turning point in his career. Lots of his photographs being produced in California and southwest which he showed his love and affection for as most the photographs he produced were taken here until about 1941.

Adams was only able to take two photographic trips for the commission as it was then interrupted by the second world war, as his photography developed he changed the way he worked and in the 1940s Adams lowered the horizons within his photos in order to record better perspective and capturing more of the mountains rather than the sky it works quite well.

I really enjoyed looking through the book of Ansel Adams 400 photographs and all the different range of photographs he took throughout his life time capturing different memories of each place, the images are crisp and have a lot of detail and rich texture which is something I like as well as the photographs looking like there has been no trace of humans and that nature has not been intervened with as now most places you go it is controlled and trimmed by humans and nature here is not commercialised and its just let to be and looks clean. 

Adams also used the techniques of dodging and burning - techniques used on film, but now they can be used in Photoshop a more modern tool but in the past something where you needed the skill to do.

Dodging was reducing the exposure and burning was increasing the exposure and Adams did this to create the images that he visualised and dodging was the process of blocking light between the lens  and photographic paper being used  and created a lighter area withing the photograph whereas for burning it darkened certain areas of the photograph. Adam's created each individual print himself in the darkroom.