Ansel Adams essay

Ansel Easton Adams, February 20th 1902 - April 22nd 1984. Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist who specialised in black and white photography, being best known for his landscape images of the 'American West'. In his 60 year career he has created some inspiring and influential images that have made an impact on a large number of people.

Ansel Adams has influenced me a lot as my talents in photography have grown, his work is so beautiful and i could look at his work all day. The use of black and white constantly creates an eere effect to his images but in a very atmospheric interesting way. The way he has used film creates a slight grainy effect to some of his images which works in partnership with the black and white to create a striking photograph. All of these landscape photos from the American West are taken on a large format camera therefor there suited to be very big bold photos, this is an effect i really love when an image is so strong!

This is one of my favourite images taken by Ansel Adams. I love the simplicity of the tree and rocks but put together creates a really beautiful image. The tree is where your eyes are immediatly drawn to but then you see the huge empty mass of space behind it, this really puts you in the image and makes you feel like your there stood taking the photo. It makes you want to stand on the rocks and see whats behind them! I also feel that the shadow of the tree on the rocks and ground creates a whole other image within this image. The black and white is quite light and not heavily contrasted which really makes the shadow stand out, this wouldnt of been as noticable if the brightness and contrast had been edited a lot.

As we all know Ansel Adams is known for his landscape photography, his work influenced me into wanting to take more images of landscapes and specialise in this more. His work shows how he has travelled around to get the best images he can from the best countries, cities, towns etc. His work reminds me slightly of documentary images as i can imagine them being on a t.v programme such as 'Planet Earth' showing the amazing places in the world that a lot of people probably wont get the opportunity to visit. Because he was an environmentalist it was inevitable that his work would be heavily focused on everything to do with the environment but he has captured unbelievable beautiful landscapes and scenes.

This image here for example is what i would count as a sight that not many people would get the opportunity to see. As he was stood there he so professionally captured the right moment when the waves came crashing over the rocks creating a foamy bath. The contrast of the white bubbles and waves against the dark black rocks works really well as it makes the bubbles stand out. The mist behind has been perfectly captured too, that is something that really makes this image what it is as thats the detailed effect waves make when they crash against something. Not something thats always seen! As i look at this photo i can feel the mist moisture on my face and i can hear the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks, this is something i feel is so important in an image as it makes you feel like your there. Its something i cant explain when i look at his images they just take my breath away, im so passionate about his work.

This is an image i have just come across and i thought it was fantastic! The turtle is happily swimming along and Ansel has managed to capture this just right with the arms both mirroring eachother as it effortlessly glides along. It's interesting to see a difference in his work, to see something slightly different to landscapes. Although he has still got a landscape effect in this image with the empty space of sea behind the turtle making the turtle really stand out especially the peircing black eyes. The eyes are the first thing your eyes are drawn too, it looks like he's swimming towards the camera to have a good look at what it is. 

Although Ansel Adams influences me a lot and i love to look at his work, i havent done that many landscape images myself. I have an open mind about what i photograph for each assignment and i havent specialised in anything yet. I have similarly used film and black and white like him and i have photographed nature in different shapes and forms. His work too me is more inspiring and such a beauty to look at, it makes me smile when im down as it makes me feel like im there in the photograph. This is the main reason why i find his work so amazing as i feel like im there when im looking at the photos, i can feel everything that i can see. Fantastic photographer!

write and fold over task

For this task we had to 'write and fold over' similar to the game consequences. There was 5 different things we had to answer to then create an image out of those words.


1. Write down the name of a colour - RED
2. Write down the name of an object - JELLY BABIES
3. Write down the name of a random word - CLOCK
4. Write down the line of your favourite lyrics - ''DONT WORRY ABOUT A THING BECAUSE EVERY LITTLE THING IS GONNA BE ALRIGHT''
5. Write down a number - 5

This is my final image that i created from all 5 of the 'write and fold over' questions. I tried to link in the words and images with eachother so the photo flowed and didnt look like i had just dumped a load of words and photos together. The name of a random word was clock, so i decided to make this the background of the image to layer everything else on top of. The name of an object was jelly babies and the number was 5, so for this i thought it would be a good idea to link the two together and have 5 jelly babies in the image. I just layerd them on top of the clock and played around with the capacity so you could still see the clock under the jelly babies. The line of my song was 'Dont worry about a thing, because every little thing is gonna be alright' and the colour was red so again i wanted to tie the two together and had the lyrics in the colour red. This was just a small task so im not too bothered about the fact i've used images off the internet as i had to do it in a rush and didnt have enough time to take my own photos anyway!

Snowflake task

We had to make snowflakes out of paper and photograph them in unusual places. We could make large snowflakes or small snowflakes! This task was set because Marie had done a project for herself where she had taken a photo a day with a different snowflake in a different unusual place. I found them quite hard to make as it was all fiddley cutting out small bits if paper to create the pretty snowflake shape. I went outside with Charl and we put our snowflakes in puddles and photographed them after we had taken our own photo, i stuck mine to the back of a students mo-ped. I then edited my photo in 'picnik' and added a few different filters to it to give it the old fashioned look, then i put it in a film strip style with the black strip across the top and bottom of the image. This was just a bit of experimentation as i didnt really know what to do with the photo after i had taken it.