Ansel Adams

American photographer, known for his black-and-white photographs of Yosemite National Park, the California coast, and other wilderness areas of the American West. Adams's painstaking control of tonality and detail made him unequalled as a technical master of the black and white print. His photographs convey both the vast scale and the intimate detail of a landscape.

Adams invented a method of exposure and development called the zone system, which he used to divide the gradations of light in a scene into ten zones from black to white; this allowed him to visualize the different levels of gray in the final photograph with great accuracy. The control he achieved with this system enabled him to capture such subtle changes of tone and light that he could return again and again to the same scene, yet produce images that were always fresh, never repetitive.

from "Adams, Ansel Easton," Microsoft¨ Encarta¨ Online Encyclopedia 2001

Bishop Pass, Kings River Canyon, California.

Reading

Adams published more than two dozen books, including My Camera in the National Parks (1950), Ansel Adams: Images 1923-1974 (1974), Photographs of the Southwest (1976), and Yosemite and the Range of Light (1979).

Photographs from 1926-33
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/adams/

Ansel Adams Gallery
http://www.anseladams.com/