Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams is a photographer who I greatly admire for his artistic qualities. His black and white photography is astounding and very moving and the beautiful landscapes he captured as a photographer leave me breathless. Adams was born in San Francisco, California and right from a young child always enjoyed the beauty of nature and taking walks through the forest. Adams at the young age of 12 taught himself to play piano and read music; leading him into a great career as a musician for the next 12 years. After having a tough childhood, music became an way of dealing with his past, an escape for him a way he could express himself in some ways; this also helped him with photography later on giving him a solid foundation for art appreciation.

After years of being a musician Adams put his music aside for his upcoming career in photography. Joining the Sierra club was very critical to Adam's later success as a photographer as he made many friends and mentors through Sierra club. Adams main style of photography was "straight photography" he used the clarity of the lens to make the images seem to appear pure and not manipulated. Most of Adam's photographs were artistic than anything, he was really great at capturing the essence of what nature was and the beauty of it through his amazing landscapes.

I find the Ansel and I seem to really have a lot of similarities. We both have a love for art and music, the only difference is I am going into music from photography as he went from music to photography. My passion for photography is mainly doing art photography as well as landscapes, as Ansel Adam's also.

In the above image entitled: Jeffrey Pine, Sentinel Dome by Adam's Lies a lot of truth and and something beautiful. As I have found out from research Adam's before his photography or even his music career was an environmentalist, hence the subject of the majority of his photographs. This image is very unique and stuck out to me because even though it is in nature the tree in his photo is very bent and uniquely formed. The tree has beautiful sunshine upon it, casting a nice shadow upon the rock it's planted on. Composition is really good and the photo is well balanced because of the shape of the tree and the shadow it casts. Because the image is in black and white makes it even more beautiful than if it were in color. I think that color would take away from the beauty it already carries. When I look at this image I get a very strong interpretation for the subject, being the fact that no two people on this earth are the same, everyone is unique in their own way. What determines beauty? uniqueness is what makes something or someone beautiful, rather than the stereotypical model of what our world defines as "perfect" or even in nature what a "perfect" tree would look like.