Connecting Essay 2

Ansel Adams

  This is a photograph taken and manipulated by Ansel Adams. His photographs of picturesque landscapes all contain a large range of tones. However, I chose this image because I like how the sky is filled with dark tones because I feel as if it creates a mysterious effect. I also like how the reflection of the sky on the water looks as if the picture has just been flipped and repeated because of the extremely clear reflection. It is hard to see the land in the distance because of the heavily overcast sky which makes the image more interesting. I like how the bright white tones in the sky are contrasted with one half of the sky which is heavily contrasted. I think Adams wanted to focus on landscapes when incorporating tones because in my opinion, they have a lot of potential to present a range of tones due to the natural contrasts within the environment. For example white snow laying upon a dark grey rocky mountain etc.



   I chose this image from my selection of work for tone photography because I think that the two images are fairly similar in terms of the sky. In this image there are heavy dark tones in the sky, as in the one above. In both images, the sky seems to go from darker to lighter as our eyes are lead further into the image. There are also bright white tones peeping through the overcast sky. I think that this image would have been better if I had took it as a landscape image rather than portrait because then the images would be extremely similar. In the image above, the photographers' idea was to obviously present natural landscapes and elements such as the sky. In my opinion, this is interesting because the clouds can move so quickly and within a matter of minutes, the picture would look completely different.