I live near Yosemite and make my way up several times a year, and I shoot there a lot. But I always stop at the Ansel Adams Gallery, because there are usually at least two of his prints for view and sale. They are the most amazing things, they practically glow off the wall. Seeing these works in person is very important to me, it reminds me that photography is not as mundane as it can seem in our over-exposed world. When you see the real thing, all photography becomes special again, and the possibility of someday making something that beautiful is enough to make me want to keep learning, keep shooting, keep trying to get better. I know there are others who have this impact, but Ansel has left us with an incredible legacy of beauty, and he backed it up by trying to pass along knowledge as well. And when you walk out of that gallery and look to your right and see Yosemite Falls, and to your left and see Half Dome, you get a chilling sense of his appreciation for both nature and the way we humans lovingly portray it.
Hi Terry, it's just me, and the way I look at things, I believe that celebrating his life and achievements rather than his birthday in the conventional sense would be a little more appropriate.Perhaps, Benji, but I'd rather celebrate his birthdate than his death-date!
Today would have been Ansel Adams 111th birthday. I think he is even more relevant today than ever. He has managed to live a full life during which he focused on what mattered to him, while avoiding the entrapments of wealth, and staying away from poverty. There is much one can learn from his example, and I have just written a short blog post, Dead Link Removed, as a way of saying a "thank you" to this amazing man.
Happy Birthday, Ansel!
Great! I was trying to mention that birthday to someone, but couldn't find the place to slip it in. I noted the birthday on my 1985 Earth First! calendar (which matches 2013). Because AA is the one photographer most people can name, if they can name any, people seem afraid to mention how great he was - besides being an absolutely solid photographer who knew every step of the process fully, he was a great writer and teacher, a conservationist, an activist, and not afraid to say what he thought. It's getting harder to be able to find /any/ of these qualities anymore. Where are all the icoloclasts these days?
[...] besides being an absolutely solid photographer who knew every step of the process fully, he was a great writer and teacher, a conservationist, an activist, and not afraid to say what he thought. It's getting harder to be able to find /any/ of these qualities anymore. Where are all the icoloclasts these days?
And a talented pianist. Where are all the polymaths and Renaissance persons these days? In fact, a talented pianist first; his autobiography describes how that's what he was first trained for and got to near-professional proficiency. Being selfish for a moment on behalf of photographers, we are lucky he ended up changing careers and that we have his lifetime of pictures and writings left to posterity. Of course since Adams lived in the 20th Century, not the 17th, we would have a lifetime full of his performances preserved on tape for posterity to hear if he had gone on to be a musician of similar prominence to what he was as a photographer.
--Dave
Rafal, you must have been well off at some point in your life for you to view wealth as an entrapment, I agree Ansel was a great photographer and created amazing prints, but to say he avoided wealth is like saying man avoids food and sex, yes there are monks who abstain from such things for periods of time, but I just think in the real world, anyone who came up poor would never make a statement like this, I grew up poor and I'm still poor, I don't NEED to be wealthy beyond my dreams, but I certainly would like to be able to live comfortably, wealthy would be wonderful to me, I dream of wealth, because it's very hard to be inspired and to persevere when you have nothing...
Eleventy one! Still need to see the London show.
Thanks, everyone, for your comments. It is interesting that not only we appreciate and remember Ansel Adams so fondly, but that he still manages to evoke emotion in your comments. To me, that is another sign how relevant he is today.
You make a good point, StoneNYC, and thank you for sharing something so very personal about yourself. I think I should have worded my observation about his life as "avoiding the entrapments of excessive wealth" rather than simply "avoiding the entrapments of wealth", but I definitely did not mean to say that he avoided wealthI wished to focus on the entrapments of it, the negative side that often comes with excess. I suppose this is a point about one's philosophy of life, but what I was trying to share in my article was that I am inspired not only by Ansel Adams's work and teachings, but also by his life, in which combining frugality, endless optimism, and a way of reducing his needs, he was able to achieve the goals of a happy life, doing what he liked doing the most. At the same time, I can see examples of many famous persons, especially nowadays, their formidable skills and fame leading them to wealthperhaps excessive wealth from some perspectivesthat seemingly takes over their lives in an endless pursuit of even more wealth.Maybe they still do not feel wealthy and just need to carry on... Ansel Adams had the wisdom to know what was enough for him, and indeed it was not an awful lot by his contemporary standards.
As for your point about being well off at some point in my life, I can say that I have never felt poor. When I emigrated from Poland some 23 years ago that country was considered poor, but I have never felt it. Out family lived happily on less than $1 per day, and by the time I left it, I had about $100 in my pocket, of which I saved $50 over a period of a few years, and I borrowed the remaining $50 from a few neighbours. When foreigners visited us, they always felt for us being poor for not having some things that seemed important to them, which was surprising to us, often funnythe only thing we didn't really have was freedom, and that was the only thing that really mattered, then... With that $100, I had been lucky to begin a new life, find good education, work, and eventually start my own, small company, first in UK then in Ireland. I am well respected in what I do in business, and I employ a few people, satisfying all our needs, helping me invest in my photography and letting me have time for it. Still, I hope that one day photography might play an even bigger role in my life.
I wish you, StoneNYC, that you fulfil your dream soon, and that you never lose your inspiration and perseverance.
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