Ansel Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer. His black-and-white landscape photographs of the American West, especially Yosemite National Park, have been widely reproduced on calendars, posters, and books. He is revered by the landscape photography community as the “Father of Landscape Photography”. Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1916 with his family. He wrote of his first view of the valley: "the splendour of Yosemite burst upon us and it was glorious... One wonder after another descended upon us... There was light everywhere... A new era began for me." His father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie box camera, during that stay and he took his first photographs with his "usual hyperactive enthusiasm". He returned to Yosemite on his own the following year with better cameras and a tripod. In the winter, he learnt basic darkroom techniques working part-time for a San Francisco photo finisher. In 1927, Adams produced his first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, in his new style, which included his famous image Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, taken with his Korona view camera using glass plates and a dark red filter (to heighten the tonal contrasts). In 1940, Ansel put together A Pageant of Photography, the most important and largest photography show in the West to date, attended by millions of visitors. With his wife, Adams completed a children's book and the very successful Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley during 1940 and 1941. He also taught photography by giving workshops in Detroit. Adams also began his first serious stint of teaching in 1941 at the Art Centre School of Los Angeles, now known as Art Centre College of Design. In 1945, Adams was asked to form the first fine art photography department at the San Francisco Art Institute. Adams invited Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston to be guest lecturers and Minor White to be lead instructor. In 1952 Adams was one of the founders of the magazine Aperture, which was intended as a serious journal of photography showcasing its best practitioners and newest innovations. Adams' photograph The Tetons and the Snake River was one of the 115 images recorded on the Voyager Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft. These images were selected to convey information about humans, plants and animals, and geological features of the Earth to a possible alien civilization. Adams’ gear consisted of large-format cameras because their high resolution helped ensure sharpness in his images. In the final twenty years of his life, the 6x6cm medium format Hasselblad was his camera of choice, with Moon and Half Dome (1960) being his favourite photo made with that marque of camera. Adams wrote many books about technique, and he developed, along with Fred Archer, the Zone System — a process which helped to determine the optimal exposure and development time for a given photograph. He also advocated for the idea of previsualization, which involved the photographer imagining what he wanted his final print to look like before he even exposed the film. His many books about photography, including the Morgan & Morgan Basic Photo Series (The Camera, The Negative, The Print, Natural Light Photography, and Artificial Light Photography) have become classics in the field. Adams’ body of work can be found here. Below is a small collection of his images. Eliot Porter (December 6, 1901 - November 2, 1990) was an American photographer noted for his detailed and exquisite colour images of landscapes. An amateur photographer since childhood, he was known for photographing the Great Spruce Head Island owned by his family. Photographer Alfred Stieglitz praised his work and gave him a show at his An American Place gallery in 1939. Porter’s early photographs of birds were in black and white, but in the early 1940s he began using the then-new Kodachrome colour film, whose slow speed required the use of large flashbulbs in order to achieve correct exposures. Porter worked with a cumbersome large-format camera, valuing the greater detail this equipment allowed. Lacking mobility because of the size of his camera and its reliance on large flashbulbs, Porter often had to spend hours and even days waiting for specific birds to perch near him. His bird photographs are of ornithological important because of their meticulous detail while also artistically of note because of their fine technique and composition. His work was in the style of Ansel Adams’s “straight” photography, showing the subject in a straightforward manner, with an emphasis on tone and detail. Gradually Porter’s colour photography shifted from the portrayal of birds to natural landscapes, which he first presented in 1962 in an exhibition entitled “In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World,” with an accompanying catalogue. Porter was active in the cause of environmental preservation and had this and other books published by the Sierra Club. He published many other collections of nature photographs, including those in The Place No One Knew (1963), Baja California (1967), Galapagos (1968), Appalachian Wilderness (1970), and The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972). Many of his finest photographs of birds were collected in Birds of North America (1972). Porter’s body of work can be found here. Below is a small collection of his images. Jack William Dykinga (born January 2, 1943) is an American photographer. Dykinga blends large-format, landscape photography with documentary photojournalism. Born in Chicago, Dykinga began his career at the Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Sun-Times before moving to Arizona, where he joined the Arizona Daily Star, and taught at the University of Arizona and Pima Community College. He is a regular contributor to Arizona Highways and National Geographic. For 1970 work with the Chicago Sun-Times he won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography citing "dramatic and sensitive photographs at the Lincoln and Dixon State Schools for the Retarded in Illinois." Jack Dykinga's Arizona is a compilation of his best Arizona images along with accounts of his personal wilderness experiences. Dykinga's other books include Frog Mountain Blues, The Secret Forest, The Sierra Pinacate, The Sonoran Desert, Stone Canyons of the Colorado Plateau, and Desert: The Mojave and Death Valley. He also wrote and photographed Large Format Nature Photography, a how-to guide to colour landscape photography, and collaborated with Mexico's Agrupación Sierra Madre to help produce their book on the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Directing his focus to the Texas-Mexico border, Dykinga highlighted the biological richness and diversity of the protected areas along the Rio Grande River corridor in the February 2007 issue of National Geographic. Two months later, Dykinga and four other photographers—Thomas Mangelsen (United States), Patricio Robles Gil (Mexico), Fulvio Eccardi (Italy and Mexico), and Florien Schultz (Germany)—formed the first ever Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition (RAVE) for the International League of Conservation Photographers. They documented the El Triunfo cloud forest in Chiapas, Mexico, to draw attention to its threatened habitat. Currently, Dykinga serves on the board of the Sonoran National Park Project in an effort to create a new bi-national park on the border of Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Dykinga’s portfolio can be found here. Below is a small collection of his images.
0 Comments
|
AuthorIIScPC team ArchivesCategories |