Ansel Adams

Adams's Yosemite and Sierra Nevada landscapes are built on a method as much as a place. With Fred Archer he devised the Zone System, a way of planning exposure and development so that every tone from deep black to bright white is placed exactly, and he compared the negative to a musical score and the print to its performance, printing the same image differently over decades. The towering skies, granite and snow are as much darkroom work as mountain work. He co-founded Group f/64 with Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, and used his photographs to campaign for national parks.