30th July 2007: Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park

Taking a black-and-white photo like Ansel Adams who is one of my most favorite photographers. The park is about a five-hour drive from Los Angeles. It is located in the western part of the Sierra Nevada and covers an area of about 3K square kilometers. It was designated a state park in 1864, a national park in 1890, and a UNESCO World Heritage in 1984.

Yosemite is America's second designated national park, it captivates visitors with its majesty, including giant granite cliffs, waterfalls, trees, and wildlife.

Yosemite National Park has approximately 913 square kilometers of virgin forest and is home to more than 250 species of vertebrates, including fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
Coniferous forests spread out in relatively low areas, around 600 meters above sea level, where you can see many wild animals, such as American bears, bobcats, gray foxes, and mule deer. Fewer non-coniferous trees are at higher altitudes; you can see California red fir, Jeffrey pine, and larch pine. Reptiles rarely seen in Japan also live here, so it's fun to keep your eyes on them while hiking.

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco in 1902. At age 12, he dropped out of school and joined the Sierra Club, a nature conservation group. From the 1920s to the 1950s, he captured the American landscape on tens of thousands of negatives, producing beautiful black-and-white prints of the majestic nature of Yosemite Valley and the High Sierra in California. His interest in photography began when he visited Yosemite Valley for the first time with his family in the summer at age14, and photographed the surroundings with a box camera. He was not able to fit in at school, and was passionate about piano, aiming to become a concert pianist, but his summer visits to Yosemite gradually led him to the path of photography.

In 1928, at the age of 26, Ansel married Virginia, the daughter of a Yosemite photo studio owner. She also supported Ansel's photography activities as a nature-loving hiker.
In 1930, at the age of 28, Ansel met Albert Bender, and the publication of his first photo book, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, was realized. This work included his later masterpiece, Monolith Half Dome, and was an experiment in his style of photography.

In his 1944 photo collection Born Free and Equal, Ansel expressed his protest against the internment of Japanese Americans and his skepticism of the war. Ansel felt that his nature photography was evolving to reflect his deep patriotism and concern. His work captured the grandeur of nature and succeeded in imbuing it with strong emotion, making it appeal to a wider audience.

Having gained fame, Ansel also devoted himself to social activism, working to establish the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the photography department at the San Francisco Art Institute. He also gave lectures and workshops in the educational field, and published books on photography techniques, including The Camera, The Negative, and The Print. He also participated in conservation efforts, and felt a sense of crisis about the touristization of American nature.

On April 22, 1984, Ansel died of heart disease at the age of 82. In 1985, the High Sierra was named "Mount Ansel Adams" to commemorate his achievements. His family scattered his ashes on this mountain, the place he loved most, and he remains there to this day. Adams' work has influenced many people as it makes them think deeply about the relationship between nature and humans.

Zone System

In 1941, Ansel devised the "Zone System" as a total photographic method of shooting, negative development, and prints to maximize the state of light. The original print born from this technology that reproduces the middle tone mostly has a very high quality. It may be a necessary technology not only because it is a film era where you do not know what kind of photo it will be until you develop it in the lab, but also because it is a digital era with a more flexible digital era.