Ansel Adams life and two analysis of his photographs.

Ansel Adams was born February 20, 1902, in San Francisco, California. Ansel took an interest in music at an early age. He taught himself how to play the piano and enjoyed the surroundings of nature. In 1916, he and his parents went on a trip to Yosemite National Park where he received his first camera, the Kodak Box Brownie. His first photographs recorded their vacation. Ansel fell in love with Yosemite National Park and would return every summer. He worked four summers as the caretaker of the park's club headquarters. During this time, he became an expert mountaineer and conservationist and gained vast of experience as a landscape photographer. Ansel struggled between two professions, photography and music. In 1920, he decided to become a concert pianist. For seven years he gave piano lessons and concerts. After viewing Paul Strand's wonderful work, Adams decided to switch careers to photography. A short time later, he joined "f/64", a group dedicated to the concept of photography that looked like photography, not like an imitation of other art forms. Ansel stands as one of America's greatest landscape photographers. His career was punctuated with countless elegant, handsomely composed, and technically flawless photographs of outstanding natural landscapes. His strength as an artist is largely attributed to his diligent investigation of the methods of photography, developing a careful darkroom technique of exposure and development he called the Zone System. In each of his images, Adams aimed to vary the range of tones from rich black to whitest white in order to achieve perfect photographic clarity. His reputation has been firmly established by exhibitions in virtually every major American art museum, three Guggenheim Fellowships and a score of publications.

One of Ansel's landscape photographs is Forest of Aspen. Forest of Aspen is an excellent example of chiaroscuro. The focal point is the tree on the left side that looks as if it is illuminated by the sun.