Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

Context
Ansel Adams (Feb. 20 1902 — Apr. 22, 1984) was born in San Francisco, California. Adams grew up in a house set amid the sand dunes of the Golden Gate. In Adams’s childhood he displayed joy in nature. Adams like photographing landscaped but another photographer had a powerful impact on Adams and helped to move him away from the “pictorial” style. Adams began to pursue “straight photography,” in which the clarity of the lens was emphasised, and the final print gave no appearance of being manipulated in the camera or the darkroom. Techniques such as “burning” and “dodging”, as well as the Zone System, a scientific system developed by Adams, is used specifically to “manipulate” the tonality and give the artist the ability to create as opposed to record. 

Photography

In this image we can see rocks in the foreground and in the background you can see some sort of mountain. We can see the different tones used in the image because both darker and lighter tones have been used. In the right hand side more darker tones have been used because the sun isn't hitting here the sun is hitting on the left side. This image links to tone because several different tones have been used in this image. It links to the context of the photographer because he grew up living in areas like this and he took pictures of mainly landscapes and things like that and this is a landscape. I can use ideas like this in my work by getting different sections of the image to have different tones.

In this image we can see mountains and a forest, in between we can see a lake. This image links to tone because we can see tone in the image. This has mainly only darker tones and lighter tones only on the mountains. The background of the image has mainly lighter tones and the foreground of the image has mainly darker tones. It links to the context of the photographer because he takes pictures of landscapes as he grew up living in conditions like this. I can use ideas like this in my work by have one main tone with other tones surrounding the main tone but not as bold.

In this image we can see a sand dune. The image links to tone because there are different tones portrayed in the image. This has mainly lighter tones on the right hand side of the image and darker tones on the left hand side of the image. The lighter tones are due to the light being aimed at them and the darker tones are due to the fact that all the light is only coming from the right hand side. This links to the context of the artist because he grew up living near sand dunes so these were probably the first things he ever got to take pictures of. I can use ideas form this in my work because I can position lighting so that only on part of image is light and the other is dark.

Progression

To progress this artist further I will use the ideas from his various image and try to incorporate them in my work.