Ansel Adams Vertical Images - Ansel Adams Gallery

Redwoods, Founders Grove. Original Photograph by Ansel Adams

With its ability to capture the enormous breadth of a sweeping vista, the horizontal orientation is perhaps a landscape photographer’s most important tool. After all, it isn’t nicknamed the “landscape” orientation for no reason. Although many of Ansel Adams’ grand landscapes were made using a horizontal orientation, he frequently made horizontal and vertical images—often while photographing the same subject. On one trip in 1958, Ansel stumbled upon a grove of aspen trees near Canyon de Chelly in New Mexico—and though the horizontal image he made became the photograph we now know as “Aspens, Northern New Mexico,” he also made a fascinating vertical photograph, showing the spindly trees stretching up towards the sky. In fact, vertical images were so important to Ansel’s photography that he created a custom enlarger for his darkroom, allowing him to print larger vertical images than the technology of the day allowed. As a testament to the challenge of printing from vertical negatives, biographer Andrea G. Stillman writes in Looking at Ansel Adams: “John Sexton, Ansel’s photographic assistant, observed that the negative for the horizontal aspens is ‘an almost textbook perfect negative and is relatively easy to print.’ However, he described the negative for the vertical aspens in words not appropriate to reproduce here.”

Though printing from Ansel’s vertical negatives may have been a technical challenge, the rewards are well worth it. In “Redwoods, Founders Grove,” Ansel uses the dimensionality of the image to his full advantage, capturing the dramatic juxtaposition between the redwoods’ towering stature and the delicate dappling of sunlight on the forest floor. The bold shapes of the trees in the background and the rich depth of detail in the foreground place the viewer right beside Ansel at his camera. One can almost smell the earthy moistness of the forest floor as it mingles with the rich spice of the redwood bark as it bakes in the sun. In “Trees and Snow,” a similar, yet distinct composition suggests a very different experience of a walk in the woods—one marked by the stillness and solitude of the morning after a thick blanketing of snow.

Trees in Snow, 1933. Original Photograph by Ansel Adams

In stark contrast with his grand landscapes, Ansel also used vertical photography to capture the subtle beauty of nature that’s best seen up close. During a 1947 trip to Alaska, Ansel was disappointed to find that torrential June storms and swarms of hungry mosquitoes made long-range photography difficult, if not downright impossible. Though he managed to make “Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake,” one of his iconic landscapes, on that trip, he mainly found himself photographing scenes that were closer at hand. “Trailside, Near Juneau” shows Ansel’s unique ability to capture not just the sweeping grandeur of a distant vista, but the exquisite details of buds and leaves. Here, Ansel’s eye for detail points out a constellation of tiny flowers, juxtaposed with the bolder, geometric shapes of fallen leaves. The vertical orientation of the photograph draws the eye upward, giving drama and energy to a scene that, though still, is anything but static.

Though the vibrance of Ansel’s style suggests that his photographic creations were a matter of serendipity, in fact, Ansel was an inveterate perfectionist. On this unique print of “Trailside, Juneau,” you can see that, after this print was made, Ansel accidentally signed his name upside-down! Never content to leave something out of place, Ansel carefully erased his pencil signature before signing it in the lower-right-hand corner as usual. You can still see the faint hint of the pencil indentations at the top left, an enduring reminder that even the greatest of artists occasionally need to erase their work and try again.