I had the pleasure of meeting him twice. Once in Yosemite and once again at one of his lectures. Do the math and you know I'm an old koot too. He was truly a pioneer.
Rod Schweiger you are indeed very fortunate to have met the great man and to me, Ansel Adams is to photography what Ennio Morricone is to music. Whenever I hear people putting down black & white photography I refer them to the works of Ansel Adams and Walker Evans who made black & white photography a true art form.
You are very lucky! I was in the process of taking a class on BW photography and darkroom techniques in the SF Bay Area when I heard Ansel Adams died. All of us in that class were very sad. On my next trip to Yosemite I stopped by the Ansel Adams Gallery and bought 2 BW posters. They are still adorning my living room wall. Meanwhile my own color photos of Yosemite are up on the opposite wall. Ansel Adams definitely influenced the way I take photos!
Thank you for making this video. I remember seeing Adam's photographs for the first time in the 70s when I was a kid and being blown away. They are timeless.
Re: Moonrise over Hernandez - Adams determined his exposure by knowing the luminosity value of the moon. Per Adams himself, "I was at a loss with the subject luminance values, and I confess I was thinking about bracketing several exposures, when I suddenly realized that I knew the luminance of the moon-250 c/ft2. Using the Exposure Formula, I placed this luminance on Zone VII;"
Ansel Adams was the photographer who made the biggest influence in my photography. Looking back to my youth, before photography was ever part of my universe, I purchased an Ansel Adams print for my wall. It was one of his shots at Yosemite. Some of my favorite landscape photos are of my 1st time visiting Yosemite. I too fell in love. It is a magical place. Prophetic.
One who shot a thousand landscape photos with a Rebel T6 would feel very small and intimidated by just seeing one black and white frame from Ansel Adams. So inspiring!
Well done! You totally had me when you said he took up music & stayed in SF. It was really interesting to see the different prints of Moonrise over Hernandez.
Wonderfully planned out video that takes the viewer on not just a historical and artistic journey, but also a very personal journey. Oh also with a hint of comedy! ..Really Great video!
Thank you I am happy you liked it! I am also happy you found my comedy as I have always those funny ideas but it seems like they never actually work in the videos 😂
I wonder how many of you have heard of Carlton E Watkins? He was photographing Yosemite (and the reason it exists) almost 100years before Adams with glass mammoth plates. Adams was an amazing printer and pianist. The American pioneers of photograph are names like A. J. Russell, William Henry Jackson. Alexander Gardiner and Timothy O'Sullivan to name a few.
Yellowstone is a National Park because of Jackson's prints. For decades, the few people who went there told about the place, & no one believed them. Then Jackson went there w/an Army Survey Detail in 1871, & presented his 20x24 contact prints to Congress. Yellowstone National Park was created the following year.
@@emilyadams3228when you read about the history and lives of Jackson and the other pioneers its amazing. The hardship they endured and determination to create fantastic contact prints from glass plates that still make you go wow today.
Adams was in awe Watkin's sheer perseverance in dealing with the equipment of his day. In Watkin's time, barely twenty years after the invention of photography, a photographer had to carefully coat a glass plate in emulsion, load the plate into a holder, slide it into a camera, take the photo, then develop the plate - while it was still wet! You had to travel with some sort of darkroom set up, be near a source of water (or carry gallons of water with you), and be a chemist as well as a photographer. Although Adams transported a huge amount of equipment with him, he could purchase already-prepared dry glass plates, expose them, and develop them when he got back to a studio. When Adams played the piano, his favourite music was Bach - and Scriabin.
Another great overview! Adams is such an icon in photography we often get more caught-up in who he was than what he did. The prints are education enough, however, Adams also contributed the concept of seamless technique from visualization to realization (of the final print) which is the foundation of all he taught. In addition to the zone system the "The" books ('The Camera', 'The Negative', 'The Print' and etc., and, though it's not part of the original educational books, 'The Making of 40 Photographs' which is like a short summary of all the others through examples) are his contribution to photographic education. They provide an unparalleled definition and detailing of photographic craftsmanship as it was in his time. Much of it is no longer relevant as cameras have changed and film photography has become an 'alternative' form of photography to digital photography. So, how much of Adams' thinking can be salvaged to help us improve digital photography? Probably more than we think.
I feel like many of his techniques can be applied in photoshop or other editing software. Also (I think) a lot of his advice originated because there used to be limitations (cameras, film, etc.) and I feel like many of them are not relevant anymore due to digital medium being more forgiving.
@@aboutphotography Yes, I agree. You mentioned in the live stream you were going to London to improve your English. Your English is very good, I'm a retired English teacher (TOEFL, IELTS & TOEIC) so my assessment is 'professional'. One thing to mention: advice is a non-countable so it is always the singular form - just 'advice'.
Thank you for this documentary, well done! You just inspired me to revisit the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite. While I visit and photograph Yosemite many times a year, I haven’t been to the gallery in a while. Luckily I have 2 more day passes this month! 😄 Thanks again!
For anyone wanting to replicate the half dome effect, it's was a deep/dark red, not your standard red filter. Of course these are available commonly, they let very little light through
I went to Yosemite several years ago and some years later I've visited an Ansel Adams exhibition in Italy, with the prints he made. There, I've seen in large size the photo you show in the video at 5:50 and it brought me back in Yosemite. It was so good, with such a depth, that I had the feeling of being back for real. I've never had that feeling anagin with other landscape photography exhibitions.
Nothing new for me, but well done 12:30 minutes! I had the opportunity to see his prints here in Berlin some years ago, and it was fascinating - no book or online presentation can do them justice.
Photographers tend to take an anthropocentric or ecologically-centric methodology to their worldview. It may shift in their career, or even become borderline. Ansel Adams's music seems to have been his anthropocentric side, which pivoted to the ecologically centric, (nature as cathedral, and camera the out-stretch hand into primordialism) which was beginning to gain traction as political philosophy in the broader contemporary analytic philosophical tradition, hence possibly a departure from more traditional painting grand landscapes.
7:52 not sure Leonardo Da Vinci fits the bill there. He was very well known for his procrastination and tendency to leave patrons waiting for the delivery of the works they paid for 🤣
Don't intent to take anything away from old AA, he was a true master - and - he lived in a time where photographic paper has not yet been "leaned". Arguments like the one at 9:40, ... "the way he was working with the horizon" ... is a bit far fetched in my opinion. AA worked with the horizon like most other landscape photographers - on a scale from top to bottom - depending of the content. It's not the choice of horizon that make those image worth looking at, but his choice of main subject(s) and how they fill the frame.
I do not. It was simply an observation of his composition. And even that does not mean he really changed his style. But statistically there is a change, so I mentioned it.
@@aboutphotography My first sentence should have included an "I" ... "I don't intent to ...." Sorry about that. I think I got the rest right. Though most jews make AA the inventor of The Zone System (this is a common trend), he merely renamed the tone scale. The concept of visualizing the 1:2 ratio throughout the exposure range was widely known among photographers at his time - of course. AA could have been the first to put the "zone" name in writing. The concept made it easier to refer to a number of one exposure step intervals to each side of the mid zone represented by Kodak's 18 percent grey card. Merely a practical way of referring - now with roman numbers - to a certain steps of under or over exposure. Each zone represented an interval of grey tones within one stop. But the tone scale was by convention already shown as a step-scale, each step representing the mid-tone. Now a part of this scale was called a zone-scale. So the concept was not new. In his book The Camera AA writes: "I developed the Zone System some years later, during the period when I taught at the Art Center School in Los Angeles." For good reasons he didn't write: "I invented the Zone System ..." which would have been to much to bite off for a decent man. In The Camera he doesn't touch the concept further, but from page 159 in The Negative he writes: "It can be helpful in controlling lighting to think in terms of - exposure units. If Zone I represents one unit, the other zones are related by 1:2 ratio as follows: Zones I ... Zone IX (equals) 1 ... 256 (exposure units), or 2^8. After page 159 he elaborates on the laborious work of calibrating - everything! - from exposure to print. I think Minor White in his small book Zone System Manual from 1967 and later The New Zone System Manual (with Zakia and Lorenz) from 1976 did a better job in describing the zone concept. But it's all in the past. Everything one could achieve with the zone system is at hand with Photoshop in minutes - compared to hours.
Oh I see 😊no problem, thank you for your comment! Sorry it took me so long to reply. I usually do it on my phone but your answer was long and I wanted to carefully read it. Thank you for your notes I was not aware of that, thank you for that!
Ansel Adams was a commercial photographer. he never understood anything deeper about photography than making a good looking print for the masses...just for the money baby...and that's why he is so much adored from people who have no idea about photography..
Wow. I wonder why I just found you now, your contents are lovely! It's a shame that your works are buried among gears and trendy tips 'n trick by youtube's algorithm
Glad you enjoy it! Well I guess it is a thing for all small youtube channels. But I am happy that people who do find it actually like it and enjoy it :)
Well I guess people are definitely not helping the planet. But anyways even if you are not believing in that I think it is still worth mentioning that Ansel was part of enviromental movement.
@@aboutphotography I agree, and I apologize for my caustic post. I did enjoy the way you said he became a world renowned piano player and then was like "NOT". I thought that was funny. I was thinking "I had no idea!" I was going to tell my photography friends. At any rate, it's a great video and I watched a couple of your other ones and they're great also.
He is too influential in his own right. His style became way too popular and everyone started doing it. Now natural landscape is easily the least creative field in photography and most photographers just do derivative works that almost always can be traced back to him.
I am not sure I 100% agree with it being the least creative. I think a big part of the process is actually scouting and finding the right locating at the right time which can me very time consuming
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I had the pleasure of meeting him twice. Once in Yosemite and once again at one of his lectures. Do the math and you know I'm an old koot too. He was truly a pioneer.
I can image that! It had to be quite special. I hope you enjoyed the video!
Rod Schweiger you are indeed very fortunate to have met the great man and to me, Ansel Adams is to photography what Ennio Morricone is to music. Whenever I hear people putting down black & white photography I refer them to the works of Ansel Adams and Walker Evans who made black & white photography a true art form.
You are very lucky! I was in the process of taking a class on BW photography and darkroom techniques in the SF Bay Area when I heard Ansel Adams died. All of us in that class were very sad. On my next trip to Yosemite I stopped by the Ansel Adams Gallery and bought 2 BW posters. They are still adorning my living room wall. Meanwhile my own color photos of Yosemite are up on the opposite wall. Ansel Adams definitely influenced the way I take photos!
I got asked if one of my own landscapes if it was an Ansel adams.. I have never been so honored before.
That is a very nice compliment. I hope you enjoyed the video 😊
That was beautiful. What a tribute to an icon in his own right.
Thank you! I am happy you enjoyed it!
Thank you for making this video. I remember seeing Adam's photographs for the first time in the 70s when I was a kid and being blown away. They are timeless.
Yes indeed! I am happy you like it!
Hey there! Love what you're doing. There aren't enough people on youtube that talk about the art of photography, opposed to gear and poppy edits.
Thank you! I really enjoy making those. I am happy you liked it.
Re: Moonrise over Hernandez - Adams determined his exposure by knowing the luminosity value of the moon. Per Adams himself, "I was at a loss with the subject luminance values, and I confess I was thinking about bracketing several exposures, when I suddenly realized that I knew the luminance of the moon-250 c/ft2. Using the Exposure Formula, I placed this luminance on Zone VII;"
The editing and the selection of b-roll for this video is excellent! Thanks!
Ansel Adams was the photographer who made the biggest influence in my photography. Looking back to my youth, before photography was ever part of my universe, I purchased an Ansel Adams print for my wall. It was one of his shots at Yosemite. Some of my favorite landscape photos are of my 1st time visiting Yosemite. I too fell in love. It is a magical place.
Prophetic.
Thank you! I am happy you liked it!
What a well done video and I have absorbed a lot about Adams, my first photographer hero.
thank you! I am happy you like it! Thanks for sticking around 😊
One who shot a thousand landscape photos with a Rebel T6 would feel very small and intimidated by just seeing one black and white frame from Ansel Adams. So inspiring!
Thank you! I glad it is!
This is an excellent homage to an iconic master. Great vid, can tell you put in a ton of work. Turned out great.
Glad you enjoyed it! See you around!
Well done! You totally had me when you said he took up music & stayed in SF. It was really interesting to see the different prints of Moonrise over Hernandez.
Glad it worked out! Thank you for your comments! And I am happy you enjoyed my videos!
Thank you for this wonderful video. I'm going to share it with my photography students! :)
Very nice tribute, thanks for sharing.
Thank you very much!
Wonderfully planned out video that takes the viewer on not just a historical and artistic journey, but also a very personal journey. Oh also with a hint of comedy! ..Really Great video!
Thank you I am happy you liked it! I am also happy you found my comedy as I have always those funny ideas but it seems like they never actually work in the videos 😂
I had the amazing honor of studying with Ansel in 1975. After 50 years behind the camera I still reflect on his...being.
Sounds like a great experience!
And yet, when asked about cut and paste, he gave a blank stare...
How awesome his ability to bring such beauty to us.
I wonder how many of you have heard of Carlton E Watkins? He was photographing Yosemite (and the reason it exists) almost 100years before Adams with glass mammoth plates. Adams was an amazing printer and pianist. The American pioneers of photograph are names like A. J. Russell, William Henry Jackson. Alexander Gardiner and Timothy O'Sullivan to name a few.
Yellowstone is a National Park because of Jackson's prints. For decades, the few people who went there told about the place, & no one believed them. Then Jackson went there w/an Army Survey Detail in 1871, & presented his 20x24 contact prints to Congress. Yellowstone National Park was created the following year.
@@emilyadams3228when you read about the history and lives of Jackson and the other pioneers its amazing. The hardship they endured and determination to create fantastic contact prints from glass plates that still make you go wow today.
I am happy to find this educated discussion under my video where I can actually learn something interesting, thank you all! 🙏😊
Adams was in awe Watkin's sheer perseverance in dealing with the equipment of his day. In Watkin's time, barely twenty years after the invention of photography, a photographer had to carefully coat a glass plate in emulsion, load the plate into a holder, slide it into a camera, take the photo, then develop the plate - while it was still wet! You had to travel with some sort of darkroom set up, be near a source of water (or carry gallons of water with you), and be a chemist as well as a photographer. Although Adams transported a huge amount of equipment with him, he could purchase already-prepared dry glass plates, expose them, and develop them when he got back to a studio.
When Adams played the piano, his favourite music was Bach - and Scriabin.
@@Chrisllew_art Many of Adams early works were also using glass plates. "Monolith" for instance, is an 8x10 glass plate negative.
Really enjoyed and learnt so much from this. Thanks.
Thank you! I am happy you liked it! :) see you around!
Another great overview! Adams is such an icon in photography we often get more caught-up in who he was than what he did. The prints are education enough, however, Adams also contributed the concept of seamless technique from visualization to realization (of the final print) which is the foundation of all he taught. In addition to the zone system the "The" books ('The Camera', 'The Negative', 'The Print' and etc., and, though it's not part of the original educational books, 'The Making of 40 Photographs' which is like a short summary of all the others through examples) are his contribution to photographic education. They provide an unparalleled definition and detailing of photographic craftsmanship as it was in his time. Much of it is no longer relevant as cameras have changed and film photography has become an 'alternative' form of photography to digital photography. So, how much of Adams' thinking can be salvaged to help us improve digital photography? Probably more than we think.
I feel like many of his techniques can be applied in photoshop or other editing software. Also (I think) a lot of his advice originated because there used to be limitations (cameras, film, etc.) and I feel like many of them are not relevant anymore due to digital medium being more forgiving.
@@aboutphotography Yes, I agree. You mentioned in the live stream you were going to London to improve your English. Your English is very good, I'm a retired English teacher (TOEFL, IELTS & TOEIC) so my assessment is 'professional'. One thing to mention: advice is a non-countable so it is always the singular form - just 'advice'.
@@photographingtoronto2350 I see 😀 Thank you!
Really well done! Thanks for making this
Thank you! Glad you liked it!
Thank you for this documentary, well done! You just inspired me to revisit the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite. While I visit and photograph Yosemite many times a year, I haven’t been to the gallery in a while. Luckily I have 2 more day passes this month! 😄 Thanks again!
Haha thank you! I glad I did. What is your most favorite image of Ansel Adams?
Yet again, a wonderful introduction to one of the greats. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
A great story well told.
Thank you for your kind words! See you around!
Great video, I found it fascinating! Thanks for doing it.
Thank you! I am happy you liked it!
Ansel Adams achieved great success in his lifetime. He was the first mass-marketed fine art photographer in the world.
Great video, loved the clips, graphics, narration Does the subject justice.
Glad you enjoyed it!
This was lovely! Thanks!!
Thank you! I am happy you liked it!
Thank you for this short documentary, fantastic work :)
Thank you! I am happy you enjoyed it! See you around!
@@aboutphotography if you're ever in Munich, let me know :)
Thank you a lot! I will!
For anyone wanting to replicate the half dome effect, it's was a deep/dark red, not your standard red filter. Of course these are available commonly, they let very little light through
Good point! Thank you!
A brilliant photographer
Thank you! Hope to see you around!
Thanks pal! Great vid about the great photographer! 👍🏻
Thank you! I am happy you liked it!
I went to the Tetons and a fellow tourist complained that the place doesn’t look anything like the way Ansel Adams captured it. I begged to differ.
Another amazing videol! I love your channel, keep up the amazing work! FYI at the end you said Ansel Adams died in 1983, although he died in 1984.
Oh you are right, my bad. I will add it to the description. I am happy you enjoyed that. Thank you!
Great video, thanks.
Thank you! Happy you liked it 😊
Very inspiring 🙏♥️
Thank you!
its just not the taking of the photos it's the darkroom work.when you see a print up close in a museum thats when his art stands above the rest.
Yes!
Well done!
Thank you! Happy you liked it!
Awesome thank you 👌👌👌
Thank YOU for watching 🙏! See you around!
I went to Yosemite several years ago and some years later I've visited an Ansel Adams exhibition in Italy, with the prints he made. There, I've seen in large size the photo you show in the video at 5:50 and it brought me back in Yosemite. It was so good, with such a depth, that I had the feeling of being back for real. I've never had that feeling anagin with other landscape photography exhibitions.
That one is beautiful. I probably like most the Snake River pic.
Great photographer invented exposure charts very useful in photography.
Great job, really learned a lot!!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great video
Glad you enjoyed it
Thank you!
Thank you! See you around!
Nothing new for me, but well done 12:30 minutes! I had the opportunity to see his prints here in Berlin some years ago, and it was fascinating - no book or online presentation can do them justice.
Thank you I am glad you like it. I will have to visit the exhibition when It gets close to me 😊
Splendid! Thank you...
Thank you!
Photographers tend to take an anthropocentric or ecologically-centric methodology to their worldview. It may shift in their career, or even become borderline. Ansel Adams's music seems to have been his anthropocentric side, which pivoted to the ecologically centric, (nature as cathedral, and camera the out-stretch hand into primordialism) which was beginning to gain traction as political philosophy in the broader contemporary analytic philosophical tradition, hence possibly a departure from more traditional painting grand landscapes.
Yeah, I wouldn’t say he started with photography to be ecologically centric but slowly developed that when he was observing the nature.
I like the charts very much without which now it may be difficult to shoot any photo particularly landscape.
Yeah I agree.
Nino - He Died on April 23rd 1984 - I remember the date I was inside my darkroom as I heard it on the news...
Oh wow. Was he an influence for you?
very interesting....
Thank you! See you around! More to come soon!
7:52 not sure Leonardo Da Vinci fits the bill there. He was very well known for his procrastination and tendency to leave patrons waiting for the delivery of the works they paid for 🤣
Don't intent to take anything away from old AA, he was a true master - and - he lived in a time where photographic paper has not yet been "leaned". Arguments like the one at 9:40, ... "the way he was working with the horizon" ... is a bit far fetched in my opinion. AA worked with the horizon like most other landscape photographers - on a scale from top to bottom - depending of the content. It's not the choice of horizon that make those image worth looking at, but his choice of main subject(s) and how they fill the frame.
I do not. It was simply an observation of his composition. And even that does not mean he really changed his style. But statistically there is a change, so I mentioned it.
@@aboutphotography My first sentence should have included an "I" ... "I don't intent to ...." Sorry about that. I think I got the rest right.
Though most jews make AA the inventor of The Zone System (this is a common trend), he merely renamed the tone scale. The concept of visualizing the 1:2 ratio throughout the exposure range was widely known among photographers at his time - of course. AA could have been the first to put the "zone" name in writing. The concept made it easier to refer to a number of one exposure step intervals to each side of the mid zone represented by Kodak's 18 percent grey card. Merely a practical way of referring - now with roman numbers - to a certain steps of under or over exposure. Each zone represented an interval of grey tones within one stop. But the tone scale was by convention already shown as a step-scale, each step representing the mid-tone. Now a part of this scale was called a zone-scale. So the concept was not new. In his book The Camera AA writes: "I developed the Zone System some years later, during the period when I taught at the Art Center School in Los Angeles." For good reasons he didn't write: "I invented the Zone System ..." which would have been to much to bite off for a decent man. In The Camera he doesn't touch the concept further, but from page 159 in The Negative he writes: "It can be helpful in controlling lighting to think in terms of - exposure units. If Zone I represents one unit, the other zones are related by 1:2 ratio as follows: Zones I ... Zone IX (equals) 1 ... 256 (exposure units), or 2^8. After page 159 he elaborates on the laborious work of calibrating - everything! - from exposure to print. I think Minor White in his small book Zone System Manual from 1967 and later The New Zone System Manual (with Zakia and Lorenz) from 1976 did a better job in describing the zone concept. But it's all in the past. Everything one could achieve with the zone system is at hand with Photoshop in minutes - compared to hours.
Oh I see 😊no problem, thank you for your comment! Sorry it took me so long to reply. I usually do it on my phone but your answer was long and I wanted to carefully read it. Thank you for your notes I was not aware of that, thank you for that!
Ansel Adams was a commercial photographer. he never understood anything deeper about photography than making a good looking print for the masses...just for the money baby...and that's why he is so much adored from people who have no idea about photography..
Even though I don’t agree with that, I will argue if the end result print isn’t the most important.
Wow. I wonder why I just found you now, your contents are lovely! It's a shame that your works are buried among gears and trendy tips 'n trick by youtube's algorithm
Glad you enjoy it! Well I guess it is a thing for all small youtube channels. But I am happy that people who do find it actually like it and enjoy it :)
And yet some photographer said lightroom or other application is cheat... its not cheat, its like digitalized darkroom...
Yeah I think it is always about the vision of the photographer.
...♥
🙏
👍
I don't think there was high speed rail back in the 20'S!!
Good point!! 😂
It probably seemed high speed to them at the time though.
I have to confess. Some videos are not authentic 😂
He was using a Large format.
Yes, thanks
8x10 - 7x15 - 4x5 - 120 medium format - 35mm - and Polaroid.....
Thank you!
Please stop panning, tilting and zooming on his photos. It ruins all his compositions.
why he trick us? -_-
You lost me when you started the "Man is destroying the planet" crap. Keep your junk science out of the video, it's a great video on its own.
Well I guess people are definitely not helping the planet. But anyways even if you are not believing in that I think it is still worth mentioning that Ansel was part of enviromental movement.
@@aboutphotography I agree, and I apologize for my caustic post. I did enjoy the way you said he became a world renowned piano player and then was like "NOT". I thought that was funny. I was thinking "I had no idea!" I was going to tell my photography friends. At any rate, it's a great video and I watched a couple of your other ones and they're great also.
Thank you! I appreciate that! I think my newer ones are better actually as I get more and more into it. Thank you for your comment and see you around!
He is too influential in his own right. His style became way too popular and everyone started doing it. Now natural landscape is easily the least creative field in photography and most photographers just do derivative works that almost always can be traced back to him.
I am not sure I 100% agree with it being the least creative. I think a big part of the process is actually scouting and finding the right locating at the right time which can me very time consuming
Disrespectful drivel
Not sure what you mean by that
let me guess, you are a wedding photographer?
Not really, why? 😊 I do more something like “street” shots.
aboutphotography.blog/gallery
Well done!
Thank you! 🙏