Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams is an American photographer, born in San Fransisco, California. Adams specifically specialized in photographing American landscape in black and white. Adams was unique in that he developed his own special process for photo taking and development, called "Zone System".

The method for determining shutter speed is similar to the method used by standard ISO, but is known more specifically as an effective speed. The rest of the method consists of development, exposure, and dark room techniques.

Above is perhaps his most famous photo: "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico". As can be seen, the development of this photo was extended to accentuate the full range of tones, creating a wonderful black and white contrast.

Also, Adams utilized subjects that had defined edges, and particularly disliked softer, more rounded objects. For instance, take Adams photography on the Great Smoky Mountains as an example:

"There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs"

And in the case of the Smoky Mountains, he chose only to publish 4 photos. This, many have speculated, is most likely due to the soft edges of the mountains that are created by the heavily wooded peaks.

Implementation

(Above: Falling Ansel)

I thought falling water was a beautiful emulation of the last image in my samples of Adams' photographs because it was a structure that blended into nature, yet had a color contrast that made it stand out.

What made Adams' style very difficult to replicate was his multiple-exposure, zone system. To work with this in the digital world, I stacked many layers of the photo atop one another, and then I desaturized, contrasted, and negated some of them, selecting areas to make more transparent so those sections would stand out. As seen below, I practiced this with an image taken up close with low aperture, trying to flesh out my use of the zone system to accentuate the many colors of the thistle.

(Above: Private Property Plant and Equipment)

I found myself trespassing on a lot of farm property in attempts to grab some shot of open landscape. With this particular thistle, while not in a wide landscape shot, I had still ventured far into wheat fields in my prius. It was quite conspicuous and invigorating.

(Above: Shapeshifters)

I found this photo particularly hard to accentuate the clouds in while maintaining the integrity of the landscape and animals grazing.

(Above: Rolls)

I particularly like this photo because of the symmetry of the two hay bale rolls, and the stark contrast between the rolls, grass, treeline, and sky. Very Ansel-esque technique, if not setting.

(Above: Open)

I took multiple exposures of this tree to overlay so that I could make it stand out from the shadowed bushes on the right.

(Above: Moonrise Masked)

I went to the top of the cathedral of learning at 30 minutes past moon rise, yet to no avail, as it was masked by the fog. Once again, despite my layering, my long exposures with high aperture kept the clouds from showing rough edges, and made them a uniform haze. I used a windowsill to keep the camera from shaking, this allowed for more fineness and focus in all parts of the photo.

Although this may sound bad (though I don't think it is), this has encouraged me to capture more of the rural Pennsylvanian life. I actually had to delete one of my favorite photos of a decrepit house situated next to an exploded rock-face that was cleared for an interstate: this was because the owner of the house came out and threatened to break the camera unless I deleted the photo immediately. 

It was fun: getting off campus for a while.