World Photography Day: How Ansel Adams changed photography forever

When it comes to influential photographers, you can't get much bigger than Ansel Adams. His dedication to crafting an exquisite tonal range and experimenting with composition techniques gave the world landscape photos that are still revered today. In fact, Ansel Adams' influence can be seen in the compositions of many of the landscape photographers currently working. 

World Photography Day is the perfect opportunity to revisit the work of Adams. He was an American landscape photographer who was best-known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West. He was also a passionate conservationist, fighting to preserve the incredible vistas that he photographed.

Aidin Robbins is a popular photographer and YouTuber who broke down Ansel Adams' style, methods and intentions in a recent video. He explored the different compositional techniques that Ansel Adams used, such as leading lines, negative space and capturing the interaction between permanent structures and transient weather.

Robbins also broke down the kit that Ansel Adams used, which included medium format and large format cameras. This allowed Adams to capture as much detail as possible, which he supplemented by capturing the majority of his photographs at f/64. This dedication to shooting with a large depth-of-field even lead Ansel Adams to become one of the founders of f/64 group.

To find out more about Ansel Adams, watch the video above or visit the official Ansel Adams website

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Louise Carey

With over a decade of photographic experience, Louise arms Digital Camera World with a wealth of knowledge on photographic technique and know-how – something at which she is so adept that she's delivered workshops for the likes of ITV and Sue Ryder. Louise also brings years of experience as both a web and print journalist, having served as features editor for Practical Photography magazine and contributing photography tutorials and camera analysis to titles including Digital Camera Magazine and  Digital Photographer. Louise currently shoots with the Fujifilm X-T200 and the Nikon D800, capturing self-portraits and still life images, and is DCW's ecommerce editor, meaning that she knows good camera, lens and laptop deals when she sees them.