Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

Dunes, Oceano

Ansel Adams was an American Photographer born in San Francisco, California in 1902. He died in 1984 aged 82. He is best known for his black and white photographs of the American West and primarily Yosemite National Park. In 1927 Adams created his first portfolio in a different style than what had been seen before. Ansel Adams is considered a huge influence to photographers around the world. Exhibitions are still put on to show his work even though he is dead to continue inspiring young photographers. He took many photos over his career but today I am going to talk about one taken in 1963 called Dunes, Oceano.

This photograph is one of his most famous for many different reasons. The shot brings the picture out of the image, the way the photo is taken it actually feels like a 3D image. I feel the shot shows a good vs. evil, right vs. wrong feeling. The photo also feels incredibly isolated.

There is a clearly noticeable contrast in the image, changing from light and easy going on the left to dark and hard on the right. There is a wide variety of shades in the image though the top right side of the image is more solid black.

The texture looks as if it’s soft at the top yet rough at the bottom and there is a contrast there from top to bottom. The roughness looks as thought you could touch and feel the image and its roughness. The sky looks very soft along with the left side of the sand. It looks untouched as if no one has ever been there before and has just been discovered.

There is a wide variety of shaped in this photograph though I can see a lot of triangles. It’s as if the image is made up and put together with lots of triangles, thus creating many different shapes. The shapes are a very important part of the photograph as it is one of the very first things you notice when looking at the image.

Tommy Wilson