I have loved Ansel Adams since I was a little girl. Now that I am grown up my house is still decorated with his work. And although I am not your typical college student I believe it would be helpful to add citations to this page. Someone may want to use this material one day.

Learning photography in the 1960s when I studied it in college meant learning Adams' zone system, using his books as texts. If only he had been able to finish that text on color that Woodward mentions! Since that text wasn't available, and printing color didn't work well yet (unless you could afford dye transfer), the smart students ended up shooting black and white large negatives AND Kodachrome. Print the B&W now, but some day maybe we could really print those Kodachromes. Because of the shape of the toe and the shoulder in the Kodachrome response curves, that film does capture the shadow and highlight details, much better than most digital cameras do (unless the latter use special techniques, which Adams would certainly have explained best!). That detail just doesn't show in the printing unless its processed in ways that were largely unavailable then, and which weren't needed for black and white film processed according to the methods in Adams' texts, which is why we have the impression that Kodachrome lacked that range.

Growing up my father had a b/w Ansel Adams in his office. Every time I looked at that photo, I saw a new picture. There was always a detail, shadow, and overall presence that made me never grow tired of admiring his work.

Before reading this article, I never realized how difficult color had been to capture. I take for granted the fact that color today is easy to obtain and everywhere! I love the fact the Adams strived to change the way things were and I am eager to read his new book.

I had never seen any of Adams's color photographs until now, and I can only say I'm truly amazed at how well he had mastered all forms of film photography. He was truly one of those photographers who "just got it."

This article certainly has inspired me to look into more of his work. I had seen some of his B&W Landscapes, but never much of his urban art. His work never ceases to amaze me.

Prior to reading this article I had never read Smithsonian Magazine nor had I heard of Ansel Adams. This article was very informative about Mr. Adams as well being extremely well written, I now have an interest in both.
I really appreciate how thorough and informative the articles published in this magazine are, truly a great piece of literature.
Mr. Adams on the other hand is simply an amazing photographer. Both his B & W work and color portraits are truly inspiring.

I met Mr. Adams at his home and workshop in the Carmel Highlands in about 1969, maybe '70. I was a student of one of his students (Al Weber).

I recall he showed us a color print, but he was modest about it and suggested it was the inevitable future of photography but he was clearly more in command of the subject when he talked about his work in black and white.

Around that time Wynn Bullock, one of Adams and Edward Weston's peers took to moving pieces of colored glass he picked up on the shore around on a lightboard, and he would photograph in color the "light paintings" as he called them.
When I saw him do it he was still experimenting with the process, and the results were not on a level with his mystical compositions in black and white.

in comparing Adams's color work to his b/w it is easy to understand why he was so discouraged with the color medium. The photo"s shown here are not indicative of his skill and perception. in his b/w images you see full shadow detail , brilliant high lights with detail . in these color samples. the shadows are blocked , the highlights are washed out. the problem was that the color film in the past were very contrasty and the ability to get full range images was imposable with these materials, especially kodachrome. Kodachrome is notorious for it's blocked shadows . look at any national geographic magazine of that time and you will see this blocked shadows characteristic . the problem with nature photography is that you cannot control the light you have to work with. In b/w Adams could gain great control over the image because the b/w negative film was, and still is "adjustable" , to match the light"s contrast by adjusting the developing process in the dark room. In the color process ,both negative and positive {transparencies] involve three separate films , red, green, and blue, sandwiched together and processed all at the same time. any change in the process would have a different effect on each layer resulting in wild color distortions. there is the dye transfer process that uses three separate b/w negatives shot through red, green, and blue filters and then these can be processed in the same way as regular b/w then the negatives are registered in too one image. See the work of -Eliot Porter- Adams found the dye transfer to time consuming and the fact that if any thing moved during the three exposures the movement would be noticeable with a rainbow effect from the three different colors shot separately. who knows what Ansel Adams could of done with the advent of photoshop and the high dynamic range photography that we have to day.

As a genius in the field of photography, Adams understood that the mechanical process of capturing color is very different from the interpretation that the human eye/brain connection makes. Were he alive today in the growing digital age, he would still be struggling with the difference. We can appreciate his mastery of light by converting some of our color photographs to black and white and see how lifeless many of them are, especially without digital manipulation. Every photographer should take the time to try this experiment to truly appreciate Ansel Adams.
Adams, the late Galen Rowell (unique vision and energy) and DeWitt Jones (inside the mind and soul of the photographer) are my guiding lights in shaping my photographic experience.

As a new admirer of his work it is pleasurable to see articles and books still written by him. I think he was a genius and a very insightful photographer who viewed photography from a philosophical point of view.

Interesting to read this article after being friends with a photographer who, I believe, knew Adams, and who also spent years in his own color lab trying to establish, measure, and lock down the variables associated with Kodachrome development, looking at time, temperature, chemistry, etc., and attempting to make a viable, repeatable computer program that would yield a repeatable, predictable, consistent Kodachrome development process and result. It was a huge effort, but I understood that it never was sufficiently successful, and that, ultimately, there developed questions about the longevity of the truth of the color in Kodachrome images over time.

I have always adored Ansel Adams B&W photographs, having cut my teeth on them at art school in the 1980s. I understand his reluctance to use colour when the outcome was not completely controllable by him. Colour is an added element of design that needs such careful consideration in a composition. His colour photos shown here are quite beautiful, but aren't quite the quintessential Adams we know and love.

Although this picture is beautiful, I prefer Adams' black and white photos. There's such beauty in the starkness of them.