Ansel Adams Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Ansel Adams - Essay Example He got his distinct mark in his nose when he was thrown to the ground during the aftershock of earthquake and fire in 1906, when he was just four years old (Turnage, n.d.). According to Turnage (n.d.), he was born in a very conservative social and emotional environment being an only child of elderly parents. It was in 1907 when the family’s fortune collapsed that Adams’s father spent the whole time to regain their lost fortune (Turnage, n.d.). He loved music and started to play the piano which inspired and crafted his visual artistry. He gained an appreciation of nature living his childhood at the Golden Gate which is his primary foundation photography (www.sierraclub.org, History: Ansel Adams). He was once an unpromising and rebellious student which resulted to his removal from school (Szarwkowski, 2010). According to Szarkowski (2010), he was a gifted pianist thus made him become determined and ambitious musician. In was in 1916 when he got his first camera that he de monstrated his talent in photography (Szarkowski, 2010). It was in the year 1927 when he took his first High Trip of the Siera Club and finished his first fully dreamed of photograph, Monolith, the Face of Dome (Turnage, n.d.). This year became very important because he met San Francisco’s patron of arts and artists and insurance tycoon, Albert Bended, whose companionship, encouragement and polite financial support changed Adams’s life (Turnage, n.d.). It was Bended who took charge of the preparation and publication of Adams’s first portfolio, the Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras (Turnage, n.d.). Bender was the main influence who transformed a journeyman pianist to a creative photographer (Turnage, n.d.). Adams’s joined annual Sierra Club outing and became their official photographer. His role in the club grew quickly which in turn the club developed into a very important factor to his success in photography (www.sierraclub.org, History: Ansel Adams). His membership in the club developed his political involvement thus suggesting proposals for improving parks and wilderness (www.sierraclub.org, History: Ansel Adams). The club soon became an influential national organization that fought for the creation of national parks and protection of environment (www.sierraclub.org, History: Ansel Adams). He became prominent in photographic community in 1935 when he was working and contributing technical articles to a popular photography press (Szarkowski, 2010). In 1936, his worked was renowned by Alfred Steiglitz and he further used his position in the field to boost approval of photography as fine art since then (Szarkowski, 2010). President Jimmy Carter awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Adams in 1980 as recognition of his work as environmentalist and photographer (Szarkowski, 2010). Although he worked basically in the photographic print, he also got involved and became a motivator of the photomechanical reproduction (Szarkowski , 2010). He persistently explored the technical possibilities of photography in the 1940s (Szarkowski, 2010). According to Szarkowski (2010), Adams also got really busy of the â€Å"zone system† which â€Å"rationalized the relationship among exposure, development, and resulting densities in the photograph