Ansel Adams

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Recommended: Importance of national parks essay

"Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhuman spectacle of rock and cloud and sky and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to know it all, possess it all, embrace the entire scene intimately, deeply, totally as a man desires a beautiful woman. An insane wish? Perhaps not-at least there’s nothing else, no one human, to dispute possession with me" (Abbey 6). People today seem to view our wondrous national parks as such a small part of our country. They do, in fact, only take up a small percentage of the total land in the United States, but they are so much more than just the amount of land they assume. Our national parks are the places that we have deemed superior than that of any other place in the country. They have been created by God, but shaped by the powerful forces of the earth. We see them as wondrous places, but when they are viewed in depth, and given a description of beauty, we begin to see how they were created, shaped, and how they should be viewed.

A man that brought this wonderful way of viewing our national parks is Ansel Adams. He used photography to bring awe and wonder to people who have never seen the true beauty of our national parks’ landscapes. His black and white photographs brought new dimension and perspective to some of the most beautiful spectacles on earth, which lay right here in our own country. In the article "Celebrating 100 Years of Ansel Adams", Ann Zwinger said, "I can even imagine standing precisely where he stood to frame a landscape portrait and not recognizing the subject, for his eye, his choice of moment, were so individual, and the possibilities so vast, that he photographed scenes that existed only in his camera lens." And as Ansel himself sai...

... middle of paper ...

...rado River, I begin to see how much splendor that these parks hold. And if I never get to see any of these places, I will be glad that I have had the opportunity to realize that we have marvelous places here in our country, and we should view them with pride, and realize the time, the power, and the hand that created them.

Works Cited

Abbey, Edward. Desert Solitaire. New York: Ballantine Books, 1968.

Ansel Adams, Photographer. Videocassette. Dir. John Huszar. Film America Corp,

1997.

Let The River Run: A Journey Into Glen Canyon. Videocassette. Photo. David Brower.

Glen Canyon Institute, 1997.

Muir, John. Our National Parks. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1991.

Showcase of the Ages. Videocassette. Dir. Joe Munroe, 1996.

Zwinger, Ann. "Celebrating 100 Years of Ansel Adams". 20 March 2002.

<http://www.english.iup.edu/lmasiell/aadams1.htm>

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