Artist Research

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was an American photographer, born in San Francisco, California. Born February 20th 1902, living till April 22nd 1984, Ansel Adams was one of the world's leading landscape photographers. His work was unique at the time as landscape photography was only becoming a thing  around this time. Most of his work was produced and taken within the American West, with many pieces of his work being reproduced on posters, calendars and in books. Fans today have also been inspired by Ansel Adams and emulated his work, including myself. Here is one of his most popular pieces of work called 'The Tetons - snake river":

Ansel Adams took and published this photograph in 1938/41. It was taken in the Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, U.S.A. It is famous for it's overall style and detail. The skies packed with thick clouds, shadowing the mountains in the distance while a river winds through the vegetated landscape.

This photo above is a fan made emulation. The photographer had taken this in the modern day, in the almost exact same spot. It is in colour which gives us an idea of what the original photograph could of looked like, with sharper detail; considering the quality of the Camera/lens used.

Above is another very famous photo by Ansel Adams. It was taken of Garnet lake, in the 1900's. It shows great detail, especially in the upper half of the photo. The clouds fill the sky, shadowing the snowy mountains and lake at the lower section of the photograph.


Above is a photograph by Ansel Adams too, in which was taken in 1937. I love his photography as the depth of his work is off the scale. The Mono colour scheme makes his work easily identifiable too.

Above is an image captured by Ansel Adams. It shows a tree slanted to one side on a cliff edge in the foreground with the clouded sky in the background.

Now here is a fan emulation of the previous photograph. It is a very accurate emulation, considering everything in the image especially the general structure. However, since this is a modern version, it is in colour. This is great as it helps us imagine what the colour scheme would have been like in the original photo.

Here I have taken my own photograph of the British Countryside. I have taken a similar technique from Ansel Adams where the photograph includes a cloudy sky, main feature at the bottom (In this case a fence and bending river) and obviously... the black and white colour.

I used Photoshop CS4 to edit this photograph. Here are a couple of screenshots I've taken, showing what I have done and how:

As you can see I had several different layers, tweaking the photograph but nothing dramatic.

Above is the select few I captured of this particular location. I picked the one from the very right to edit, as I think it was my favourite.