Ansel Adams

You can't do a black and white landscape project without mentioning Ansel Adams, the master himself. The Californian photographer is particularly well known for his work in Yosemite National Park and was one of the photographers who helped establish photography as a fine art.

Adam's began experimenting with photography in his early teens learning darkroom techniques and attending camera club's, reading photography magazines and going to exhibitions.

Adam's first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras are what really kick started his professional career. Between 1929 & 1942 Adams' spent time in New Mexico with other artists including Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe and Paul Strand where he began to publish essays and books on photography. He also joined Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans in projects affecting social and political change through art.

By the 1960s photography had established itself as art and Adams' was getting his work shown in galleries and museums. From the 70s onwards Adams' spent most of the time printing negatives rather than creating new work because of a demand for his iconic works, until he passed away in 1984. (Ansel Easton Adams. [Internet]. 2014. The Biography.com website. Available from:http://www.biography.com/people/ansel-adams-9175697 [Accessed 06 Dec 2014].)

Along with Fred Archer, Adams created a technique used to standardise a way of working which resulted in correct exposure every time, despite the lighting conditions, they names the technique the Zone System. This is a system that splits the image into 11 zones, each zone being 1 stop brighter than the one before. This is for black and white film and so the system has been modified for shooting digitally, so that only zones 3 through 7 are used. Zone III being absolute black and zone VII being absolute white. Anything over or under zones III and VII being over or under exposed.

As I will most likely be using black and white for my project, I thought it might be relevant to mention this system in order to utilise it for my own work.

Further explanation of the system can be seen by following this link.

http://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/understanding-using-ansel-adams-zone-system--photo-5607

Below is an example of the zones III through VII chart, and a example photograph by S k o o v.

S K O O V

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

While not directly linked with my project, I thought it was fitting to include Ansel Adams' work in my research as its quite inspirational and something strive for as it will help with creating my black and white images.