Ansel Adams was a famous American photographer known for his black and white images of Yosemite National Park and the American West. He was born in San Francisco in 1902 and had a love for nature from an early age. He developed a unique photographic style using large format cameras and an understanding of light. His prints are among the most valuable in photography, and his photos are some of the most recognized and famous in the history of photography.
Ansel Adams was a well-known American photographer whose iconic black and white images are among the most recognized in the world of photography. He is perhaps best known for his portraits of Yosemite National Park and the great desert country of the American West. Ansel Adams was born in 1902 and died in 1984 at the age of 82.
Ansel Adams was born into a successful family in San Francisco just before the great earthquake of 1906. He grew up with a love and respect for nature from an early age and the values of Ralph Waldo Emerson were deeply ingrained in his philosophy of life . Ansel Adams was first brought to Yosemite in 1916 by his parents, and it was there that he was given his first camera, a Kodak Brownie. The following year, aged 15, he returned to Yosemite alone with a handful of new cameras. He got into photography with a passion, apprenticing, reading everything written on the subject, going to every photo opening in the Bay Area, and joining numerous photography clubs.
During this time, Ansel Adams also returned frequently to Yosemite, spending time with the Best family, whose daughter, Virginia, he would later visit. His time at Yosemite further solidified his commitment to the natural world, and he joined the Sierra Club as an active member at age 17. He directed the Sierra Club’s headquarters in Yosemite for a number of years, and throughout his life he made an incredible amount to help promote an understanding of the world’s natural beauty, especially Yosemite Valley.
Adams developed a unique photographic style during his time in Yosemite and the American West, using extremely large format cameras and an amazing understanding of light. Although the cameras were incredibly heavy and bulky, they allowed for an unparalleled level of detail, which gave Ansel Adams the ability to produce huge prints in superb quality. By the late 1920s he was ready to put his work before the public eye, after just over 10 years of honing his craft. It was an instant success, with his debut portfolio earning him a good deal of money and leading to a slew of professional offers from wealthy patrons.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Ansel Adams continued to grow in popularity and he traveled throughout the American West to captivate it with his unique style. Starting in the 1970s he began to photograph much less, dedicating himself to the reprinting of old negatives, trying to satisfy part of the demand for his works. His prints are among the most valuable in photography, many fetching well over $500,000 US dollars at auction and a total value in the tens of millions of dollars.
Ansel Adams took his distinct photographic style and innovative zone system of photographic conceptualization and produced some of the most iconic photographs ever. His photos of Yosemite Valley, Half Dome, the Tetons, Glacier National Park, Taos, Sierra Nevada and Desert Country are among the most recognized and famous in the history of photography. Ansel Adams is hailed as one of the great masters of photographic lighting, and many beginning photographers use his photographs as a starting point to try to understand the dynamics of black and white photography for themselves.
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