Ansel Adams Analysis.

Ansel Adams is an environmentalist and landscape photographer from San Francisco, California whose photographic work focuses a lot on documenting various rural landscapes and the human impact on these landscapes as well as the use of the formal elements of lighting, tones and composition. For this artist analysis, I will be specifically looking at his landscape photographs in response to the theme of 'Society' for this project. I decided to document the work of Ansel Adams in relation to this theme as I intend to take a series of photographs that document the urban society that I live in and around - such as Croydon, Kingston and London - and the impact that we have on our society such as graffiti, street art and the general lack of care we show our society and the environments that we live in as well as the constant changes that we are making to them.

This was something that I felt inspired by whilst researching and analysing the work of Ansel Adams as I really like the gritty and monochromatic style that his photographs have and it could therefore be a editing style that I take inspiration from and reference within my own photographic responses to this project. Many of Ansel Adams' photographs are kept central using the rules of thirds and long-distance shot angles in order to document his chosen landscapes and the impact we have on our society. Since Ansel Adams' photographic work is based on creating a series of landscape-based photographs of rural environments that have not been affected by human life and nature, the artist takes a lot of photographs of these landscapes to capture the natural beauty of these landscapes.

A lot of the photographs that Ansel Adams have taken in order to create his project are based around various rural landscapes and the natural beauty of the landscapes that he is documenting within his work. He often focuses a lot of his photographic work on the uses of natural lighting, tones and leading line compositions within his photographs, creating stark monochromatic tones within his landscape photographs that draw his target audience's attention to the lighter tones within the landscape, often created by the natural lighting reflecting off of water or highlighting the natural structure of the mountains and stones. This in turn creates a leading line of view within his photographs as the target audience's attention is instantly drawn to the leading line created by the river of water or pathway dissecting the centre of his photographs, leading them further back into the image.

This is something that I could potentially take inspiration from within my own landscape
photographic work responding to the theme of 'Society' by adding a leading line of focus within my own photographs that could draw the attention of my own target audience into the landscape and society that I will be documenting within my work. Within my own photographic response I have decided to take a series of landscape photographs that will document the theme of 'Society' by photographing the different urban environments of Croydon, Kingston and London and the damages and lack of care that humans have for their own society within my photographs, focusing on the grit and grime that the city and town landscapes may have such as graffiti, street art and damages to buildings and the like as well as the changes that we are often making to our own society such as construction sites and demolishment of buildings.