Ansel Adams has been considered one of the greatest photographers of all time and is possibly the best American photographer of all time. He specialized in the fine art of black and white photography, and was famed forever. Though his life of brilliant pictures didn't start easy, as he grew in a very wealthy family with his dad a wealthy business man and his grandfather a very wealthy timber baron, though when he was four, he broke his nose very badly in an aftershock of an earthquake, the injury scared him for the rest of his life. Then only a year after the accident his family went almost completely broke in the financial crisis of 1907. When he then grew up a little, he went to a school where he didn't really fit in due to hid nose deformation and the fact that he had hyperactivity and possibly dyslexia. He then got tutored by his aunt and his father and got a graduate certificate from the Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private
School which would be equivalent to passing the 8th grade. When he was about the age of twelve, he taught himself paino and how to read music, soon after he began to take lessons which took over any form of formal schooling. Though one thing besides music that helped him through his struggling childhood was his long walks through the woods near his house or anywhere in nature. But for those years he persued piano and music, until 1920 when he gave up music to try photography, music had brought discipline and exact craft had helped him gain the eye for visual arts. His love formed when he first found and explored the Golden Gate, where he was instantly transfixed and in love with the beauty it shed and everything from the smell to the color he felt changed. He spent a lot of time there from about 1916 to when he died in 1984. Then in 1918 he joined the Sierra Club where he spent about four years of his life taking photos of Yosemite valley and then became leader of the club where he then met his later wife
Virginia Best. He then started having his photography shown at the club where he then realized that he could make a living off photography and would go farther doing this than he would have being a pianist. Though later in life he became a wildlife and environment activist due to his love for the thing that got his photography career started,. the environment. One of most famous photographs Monolith, the Face of Half Dome was created in his early years of 1927 and is still famed to this day. Ansel Adams was an amazing photographer and will always be remembered in history.
The reason I chose this picture is because it hangs in my house right now and I will always remember looking at it and thinking about how I want to someday take pictures like that and have my work hang in a house and have a kid look and think that of me.
special thanks to http://www.anseladams.com/anseladams_biography_s/51.htm for giving this information and to Ansel Adams for being the inspiration
