* – Ansel Adams * “There is one thing the photo must contain – the humanity of the moment.”
Photography
When I studied photography in art school, we shot everything with classic Pentax film cameras and a fixed 50mm lens. We processed and printed our film in a dark room. I became a huge fan of Black & White photography. Ansel Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. Adams is still a significant influence and favorite of mine. In the late 1950s, Adams was hired to photograph Yosemite National Park. In those days, there was no Photoshop or other fancy software. What he captured in his camera has set the bar for landscape photography. The only editorial tricks he used were dodging and burning. Yet his work caught the majestic look that captured the purity of the national park Yosemite. His work has a Zen quality and a tough bar for other photographers to reach. As a photographer shooting in black and white, the challenge remains how to achieve the technical quality of Adams while remaining unique. I shot my series with a digital mirrorless Olympus camera and pro lens. The Olympus OM-D-E M1 Mark lll i has the highest built-in image stabilization, allowing it to shoot without a tripod.
“The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score and the print the performance.”
Ansel Adams
