AO3- Task 1- Past and Present Landscape Photography/Photographers

Past and Present Landscape Photographers

Ansel Adams Ansel Adams was a landscape photographer and environmentalist who was born in 1902 and passed away in 1984, the main parts of his career were focused in the 1920’s-1970’s. As Ansel Adams was a focused activist for wilderness and the environment, he did a lot of work with conservation, however his images of wild America were one of the great ways he helped influence others. Adams constantly fought for new parks and wilderness areas as well as the idea of low usage of resources as he thought against overbuilt highways and man made features.

Adams tended to use large format cameras as they had a high resolution which helped produce his extremely high quality and sharp detailed images. Adams also created the ‘Zone system’ which helped deal with exposure and development; this allowed photographers to create a photo that creatively reflected the visual image they had envisioned. Although many photographers use colour, he choose to do many of his landscape photos in black and white.

The simplicity of this black and white landscape image clearly shows the photographers intended purpose, that is which to show the beauty of nature through the river trailing through towards the mountains in the background. The photo includes no lines of directions except for the slight line below the mountains, otherwise this image only includes the curvy organic shape of the river. This breaks up the image making it seem uncrowded and creating more of an open effect. It is completely balanced with symmetrical focus. The lighting is mostly bright on the water which creates a large emphasises on it, this therefore makes the background have a sharp contrast. The dynamic range is quite large, having the brightest points as the water and parts of the sky while the darkest is the trees closest to the camera and the bottom parts of the mountains.

Peter Lik

Peter Lik is a landscape photographer, that contrasts with Ansel Adams as he is known for use of bright vivid colours in his photographs. Born in 1959, he has been an active photographer since 1984.

Lik was introduced to panoramic cameras in the beginning of his career and continued to use this throughout. He uses FujiFlex silver-halide paper to create brighter and more vivid colours, this is because it accentuates the light and colours.

This abstract landscape photo includes vivid colours to help portray the beauty and brightness of nature. The colourful aspect contrasts to Ansel Adams image, as his in focus on the simplicity of nature while conveying it in black and white. Although the image has a balanced focus, the main subject of the photo is a tree; the tree is the organic shape that is being mostly the thing for the viewers to focus on. The orange colour is very bright and vibrant, the colour usually represents joy or happiness. The darker parts of the image includes the rocks and the branches on the tree. Because of the orange leaves the dark branches appear even more noticeable, this creating a depth to the photo as it almost looks like the branches are reaching out of the it.

Tree branches appear more noticeable against the bright colours, however balanced focus.