Ansel Adams

In my last post 'Laure Albin Guillot', I wrote about an exhibition I went to when in Paris. I wrote about the need of bringing some grandeur back to people's lives, especially after the horrors of the First World War. Soft approach and gentle touch of Laure Albin Guillot's photography was what people could easily relate and escape to. Her photography was art.

On the other hand, it was probably the harsh reality of the times that others photographers eventually decided to portray exactly what they saw in their work rather than produce 'idealised' images. In other words, there was the demand to see the real thing in photographs rather than art. And who says that the real thing cannot be as beautiful as art? Let's look at different country, different continent, different approach...

Ansel Adams who lived and worked in America took pictures most notably of Yosemite Valley, the Yosemite National Park and other National Parks in the US. The National Maritime Museum recently held exhibition showing his work; photographs of nature, of landscapes, of water, of mountains... The sharpness, clarity and the tonal work was and is incredible.

Do not forget we are talking about manual B&W photography which is something that seems to be so long ago in this digital colour world. This is the time when full understanding of aperture and shutter speed was essential to get at least a reasonable image.

Ansel Adams took this to perfection. What he produced were amazing pictures of American nature, in many cases before human interference reached it.


He was not only very particular  about the composition, the right exposure or detail. What he also put a real emphasis on was the production. He developed his own photographs and made sure that any reproduction would keep to its highest standard as well. This also pushed the publishers themselves who were astonished in what they were able to achieve.

The pictures in this post are scans from a book I bought 'The Portfolios of Ansel Adams' published by Little Brown with introduction by John Szarkowski who writes extensively about Adam's desire to capture the beauty of nature and show it at its best in publications.

One of the first things I noticed about this third edition is the quality; the paper, the reproduced photographs, the clarity and sharpness of the pictures. Now I can understand what experts mean when they say that one cannot beat the negative. The information that is captured on a negative cannot be depicted by digital photography. How amazing.

Just look at the light and dark places, the tonal difference of the middle tones, the grays and the balance in this picture. Now, try to take your digital colour photograph and turn it into black&white.

Do you think you can achieve this tonal depth? I tried and it was not easy. You can see some of my attempts on my G+ account here. Some of the photographs there are from my manual camera (shot on a film) when others are from my digital one, adjusted on a computer. Can you tell?

Have a great week and see you next time. K-)