Ansel Adams: Mount Williamson, Sierra Nevada, from Manzanar, California, c. 1944.

Nick Brandt: Abandoned Ostrich Egg, Amboseli, c. 2007.

Ansel Adams photographic and conceptual technique used: - Master of landscape photography. - Photographs using medium and large format black and white analogue cameras. - Uses wide angle lenses. - Prints in a mobile darkroom on site. A quote from Ansel Adams 400 Photographs best explains his relationship to the scene Mount Williamson: ! Adams did not enlist during World War II, but he very much wanted to make some patriotic contribution. Ralph Merritt, a Sierra Club friend and the director of the Manzanar Relocation Centre, urged Adams to document the Japanese Americans interned at the centre in Manzanar California. Adams made hundreds of photographs there during 1943 and 1944. On one of his visits, he drove to a spot overlooking a eld of boulders and took this picture. There was a glorious storm going on in the mountains, he wrote. I set up my camera on the rooftop platform of my car, which enabled me to get a good view over the boulders to the base of the range. (Stillman, 2007:422) Nick Brandts photographic and conceptual technique used: - Predominantly a wildlife photographer but will also convey his point about human destruction of wildlife through landscape photographs. - Photographs using black and white 6x7 analogue cameras, despite working in a time of thriving digital technology and color photography. - Uses wide angle lenses, explains this is to capture as much of the sky and landscape as possible, so the viewer can see the visual context of the subject matter. - Uses Photoshop after developing the negatives as opposed to the darkroom. Explains that this enables him to shift various grades far more precisely to gain a higher contrasted image, whilst still maintaining the detail. - Released a series of 3 books, On This Earth (2005), A Shadow Falls (2009), Across The Ravaged Land (2013). The series highlights the plight of the African wildlife at the moment. Beginning with lush wildlife, through darker and more meaningfully positioned scenes, leading up to and ending with photographs capturing the death and destruction created by humans upon nature. - The photograph Abandoned Ostrich Egg is the last to be shown in the book A Shadow Falls, this helps end the book on a sombre note and start the viewer thinking about desolation before the release of Across The Ravaged Land, which shows carcasses of animals, items gained illegally by poachers, and landscapes destroyed by human intervention. Comparisons: - Distinct sense of scale between the small objects viewed large in the foreground and the large mountains viewed small in the background. - Bold detailed foregrounds which fade into innite background. - Large egg/egg like object (boulder) as focus point in the foreground. - Transient lighting surrounding the mountains and clouds in the background. - Emphasis on the texture of the broken ground, rough jagged boulders and a desert land cracked like eggshells. - Mountains far off in the distance surrounded by clouds conveying the sense of being with God.

- Shot in black and white using analogue cameras. Obviously not a choice for Adams due to the time, however denitely a conscious choice for Brandt. Explains this was to portray the soul of the scene. - Technically complicated, exact exposures, high depth of eld, attention to detail, light and contrast. - Emphasis of weather, stormy clouds, eroding ground. - Lifeless scenes. There are no trees, animals, humans, settlements, or any sign of life. The egg can obviously be construed as a sign of life, however in the scene the viewer is made to feel the life has been abandoned and has subsequently died. Contrasts: Key: MW = Mount Williamson, AOE = Abandoned Ostrich Egg. - MW conveys hope and access to God. - AOE conveys a sombre, decaying, desolated scene. - MW leads the focus from the foreground to the background, creating no single focal point. - AOE has a denitive main focal point. - MW shows transient, heaven-like light, conveying a journey to a higher plane. - AOE though still displaying transient light conveys a sense of ending life through the setting sun. - MW portrays the feeling of being with God. - AOE portrays the feeling of being with death. - MW has the central line passing through the middle of the mountains and through the main boulder. - AOE has the central line passing to the right of the mountains and the left of the egg.

Bibliography: Stillman, Andrea G. (2007) Ansel Adams 400 Photographs. New York: Little Brown. Brandt, Nick. (2009) A Shadow Falls. San Francisco: Abrams Books. Jensen, Brooks. (2005) Interview with Nick Brandt In: LensWork November-December 2005, p62-70.