An assisted autobiography written near the end of his life, he describes his art and his relationships with the people who took him on the journey. He's such a sensitive and creative individual. A western man who was also a pianist, got his inspiration from Steiglitz, Steichen and others of the time. Also, a "conservationist" who advocated preservation of western lands. Influenced presidents and others to the same. ( )

A remarkable book

Even to someone who knows little about photography, this was utterly spellbinding.

He spoke about how he went about taking photographs, and indeed individual photographs. Notwithstanding I write this some 26 years after having first read it, I vividly remember reading about a particular photograph Adams was hoping to take, with the light moving/fading quickly and he saying he had to wait for teh horse to turn around to face the camera, as a photo of a horse's rear was not conducive to a good landscape image.

I turned to the relevant page where the photo was meant to be replicated and quickly came to the conclusion that I had turned to the wrong page having misread the cross reference, as this was a (mighty fine) photo of of mountains, not of a horse. Duly turning back to the text, but alas I had dad teh page reference correctly, so then started flicking through to find the "missing" photo, and to turn in dispare some minutes later to teh original photo.

And there, well down in the bottom left corner was aminiscule horse looking at the camera! Only if you were directed to it, or if you were a master photographer like Adams would you have noticed it or thought that the depiction of the horse in the overall image would have made one iota of difference.

This is why he is renowned as a photographer and I am not.

The other remarkable thing is this was in the day not of digital images, and not even rolls of film , but photographic plates. Big, cumbersome, heavy things, such that it would not be unknown for him to take no more than 5 plates with him into his beloved Yosemite for a walking trip, knowing he had only 5 takes with which to play with!

None of the "take a bunch and delete what you dont want" attitude so much prevalent today with teh digital cameras ( which have so much else going fro them I have to say)

Big Ship

9 January 2017
Purchased and read in Hong Kong 1990 ( )

Autobiographie d'Ansel Adams terminée peu avant son décès. Son enfance, sa formation de pianiste classique jusqu'au moment où il est devenu photographe. Plein d'anecdotes sur le métier, les gens célèbres qu'il a rencontré, ses photographies les plus célèbres, son implication dans la mouvance écologique naissante, l'élaboration du Zone System.
Il faut souligner que ce n'est pas un livre technique, mais une description de la vision que certains appellent parfois "Saint A". ( )

first edition