Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was a photographer and environmentalist from San Fransisco, California. He is seen as an environmental folk hero because of his need to preserve wildlife. As a child, he found great joy hiking and in nature itself. He also taught himself to play the piano and read music. He is best known for his black and white photography in the American Midwest.  His first photographs and writings were published in the Sierra Club Bulletin, which helped him with his early success.  He developed the Zone System with Fred Archer, which helped figure out proper exposure and contrast of a final print. This also provided photographers with defining the relationship between the way they visualize the subject and final results. The system includes aspects of visualization, exposure metering and zone, zones as the physical world, and zones as tones and textures.  Adams would use large-format cameras because they had high resolutions which helped ensure sharpness of his images.

JAM