Great Black and White Photographers II

Ansel Adams was an American photographer born in San Francisco, California on February 20, 1902.  He was the son of Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray.  Adams was raised in a house near the Golden Gate Bridge.  He had a distinct mark on his nose from when the aftershock of a powerful earthquake knocked him out of his bed and broke his nose.  In his early years, Adams was financially wealthy, until their fortune collapsed in 1907 during a financial panic.  Ansel had a rough and solitary rest of his childhood, due to being hyperactive and dyslexic.  He was also not successful in his education, being sent to multiple different school before earning a decent enough education for completing the eighth grade.  Although not successful in school, he was talented in music, and taught himself to play the piano.  He eventually gave up piano for photography, but learning to play taught him discipline, which was something he did not learn from school.  Living close to the Golden Gate Bridge, he eventually found a love for nature.  He began spending most of his time in national parks, specifically in the Yosemite Sierra area.  This was where he lived for most of his life from 1916 to his death.  His parents had given him his first camera,  the Kodak No.1 Box Brownie.  He started using it in Yosemite.  Adams joined the Sierra Club in 1919, and became the "keeper" of the LeConte Memorial Lodge.  He also became a dedicated advocate for conservation and environmentalism.  Joining the Sierra Club was very important for his beginning success as a photographer, because his first published photographs and writings were displayed in the clubs bulletin.  Each summer, Adams would go on harsh outings in Yosemite, hiking to different campsites each day.  This was around the time that Ansel Adams realized that he could make a better living as a photographer rather than a concert pianist.  In 1934, Adams was elected to be in the club's board of directors, and was established as the artist of the Sierra Nevada and the defender of the Yosemite.  Being in the Sierra Club, Adams was a huge activist for the wilderness and environment conservation.  His landscape photography was what he was most known for, being recognized by the National Park Service, Kodak, and Zeiss.  He eventually died in 1984, in Monterey, California.