American Landscape Photographer Ansel Adams

There are not many landscape photographers who become household names. Such is the reputation of Ansel Adams that Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. This is the highest award a civilian can receive. Ansel Adams specialized in black and white photographs of an unspoilt America. We are all familiar with them thru prints, greeting cards, and calendars. A lifelong environmentalist, he captured the landscape before people settled there. His photographs are a celebration of wilderness, a crisp record that are worth more than words with their great clarity.

The collection of photographs covers a range of landscape scenes. Ansel Adams never bothered with buildings much, except to photograph old churches. He concentrated on the Yosemite Valley in California, and those pictures are the ones most associated with him. Born in San Francisco in 1902, his parents gave him his first camera. It was a Kodak Box Brownie and he was hooked from that moment. He didn't just photograph the scenery, he also took up mountaineering when a young man. He organized some of the first ascents achieved in Sierra Nevada. One of the peaks in Sierra Nevada, standing at 11,760 ft is named Mount Ansel Adams in his honor.

The photographs were a great influence on how people thought of their natural heritage. His pictures weren't just something pretty to put on the wall. Ansel Adams influenced the decision to make Sequoia and King's Canyon into National Parks in 1940. His legacy also includes a number of books that he wrote on the subject of photography and three technical photographic manuals. He also helped to improve the techniques of developing prints from negatives.

A talented photographer can evoke an atmosphere from the subject, creating an image that sticks in the brain. Ansel Adams made clever use of light and composition whatever the scene in front of him. He shot great forests, mountain ranges, and major rivers as well as detailed pictures of a single tree or plant. People rarely appeared, with the exception of farm workers. He photographed in all seasons, immature oak trees in winter or azaleas in full blossom in summer. He loved meadows, lakes, and lonely piers. There are photographs of cloud formations, brightly lit or menacing with the threat of a coming storm.

No landscape photographer has achieved such popularity and critical acclaim since Ansel Adams. The fashion now is for social documentary and pictures depicting urban life. We should be very grateful that he was there to show us the heart of America before much of it was changed.

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