Ansel Adams

February 20, 1902, a photographer was born. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, Ansel Easton Adams was the only child of New England parents, Charles Hitchcock and Olive Adams. Adams' father was a businessman, whose company included an insurance agency and chemical plant. Ansel took an interest in music at an early age. He selfly taught himself how to play the piano, and he enjoyed being around the surroundings of nature. Ansel attended both public and private school. At home his father gave him lessons in math and French.

	In 1915 when Ansel was 13, his father bought him a season pass to the Panama Pacific Worlds Fair, in which he visited annually. Ansel took much interest in the Armory Show exhibition. This exhibition contained modern art that had been first presented in New York City in 1913. There was also a music exhibition that took Ansel's interest. Ansel took his first photograph in 1916 at age 19, when he and his parents went on a trip to Yosemite National Park. He took his picture with a Kodak Box Brownie camera. His images were of the park, and nature, but his major interest were the High Sierra Mountains. From that time on, Ansel returned to Yosemite National Park every summer. While he was there in 1919, he joined the Sierra Club. The purpose of this club was to explore and protect the wilderness areas of the Sierra Nevada. Ansel eventually worked in the park for four summers as the caretaker of the club's headquarters. While his time there, Ansel became an expert mountaineer and conservationist. He also gained a lot of experience shifting conditions as a photographer of landscape.

	

	 During this time until 1920, photography was just a hobby for Ansel. In 1920 he decided to make music his profession. His plan was to become a concert pianist. Ansel gave piano lessons and concerts until 1927, when he decided to change his career to photography. That same year the publication of his first book of photographs titled Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, was out. Ansel got financial support for his book from an art patron, Albert Bender. In 1930 Ansel published a limited edition portfolio of his photographs, Taos Pueblo. Mary Austin who was a novelist and essayist wrote the text. The early pictures of Ansel's were in soft-focus, or fashionable pictorial, this was popular at the time. These kinds of pictures imit...

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...Conservation Service award of the Interior Department.

In 1969 he was awarded for his photography the Progress Medal of the Photographic Society of America.

	Ansel published many portfolios and wrote many books which some include Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trial, Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley, Michael and Annie in the Yosemite Valley, Yosemite and the High Sierra, My Camera in Yosemite Valley, Camera and Lens, The Negative, The Print, Natural Light Photography, Born Free and Equal, Death Valley, and Mission San Xavier del Bac, are just a few of his portfolios and books.

	Ansel Adams was clear with his concept of art and photography. He believed that art was the affirmation of life and the concept of equivalents in photography. In other words, Ansel believed that when a photographer takes a picture he is showing how he or she feels about that subject. Something like a personal statement. Ansel had two children, Michael Adams, who was a physician, and a daughter, Anne. His wife was Virginia Adams. Ansel Adams died in 1984. His photographs are known and Ansel Easton Adams will always be known as one of the finest technicians in the history of photography.