>>4059201This seems like an ad hoc reading of his work rather than anything grounded in the real history of what makes Ansel Adams famous. I really do think you're making it up as you go.
First off, he was a second-wave landscape photographer. Guys like Carelton Watkins and William Henry Jackson and Eadward Muybridge and Timothy O'Sullivan paved the way for him 30 years before he was even born. He strapped his camera to the roof of his car? Sounds nice. These guys had to schlep ultra large format (around 18x24) wet plates on packs of mules.
The fundamentals of exposure were already there. What you're referring to is the Zone system, which aren't really fundamentals and also aren't really necessary. They were widely adopted by his acolytes. It is not taught everywhere as core curriculum and was subject to a lot of critcism by contemporary photographers as a whole lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, a needlessly complex system that anyone can achieve with basic metering and developing techniques that had been around for, again, decades before Ansel was born. I don't think you can find a photographer today who uses the zone system, even in film.
His compositions? Very common and he was far from the first or the most painterly photographer. In fact, he went on an absolutely vile campaign against the Pictorialists (William Mortensen, et al) who were already producing beautiful work that blurred the line between art and photography.
Here's the reality: he was a latecomer to landscape photography who had really good technique, but in all reality he was a vicious son of a bitch with good connections. He was lucky enough to be friends with John Szarkowski, who just so happened to be Edward Steichen's (who Ansel Adams famously hated) successor as the director of photography at MoMA. That friendship was really what propelled Ansel Adams into late career success and recognition as one of the all-time greats of fine art photography.
