Black & White

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams is a well-known photographer that led a simple, maybe complicated, life that led him to the arts and talents he's coupled with today.

When Ansel was a young boy his nose was disfigured from taking a fall during the 1906 earthquake in California, which led him to be socially unaccepted in schools until he was finally tutored by his aunt and father. This was his prior education to attending a private school.

As he matured, Ansel became familiar with the musical arts, and he played piano for a portion of his life as a true occupation. From 1996 until his death he meandered Yosemite Valley and the beautiful wildlife as inspiration, learning to grow in the natural light of his character.Yosemite Valley was also the place where he met his wife, Virginia Best. They married in 1928 and had two children.

In the early twenties Ansel soon realized, as he took hikes and trips into Sierra Nevada, that his life was much more prosperous as a photographer that a concert pianist. Not much later in 1927 did he create his first photographic piece, Monolith, the Face of Half Dome.

I chose this picture by Ansel Adams to show the contrast between light that he saw as very artistic. As it is. It also shows a beautiful difference of two landscapes, both unlike one another to be seen as one image; there are the mountains of the Sierra and the low rocky valley.

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