In a recent photo assignment we were asked to imitate a popular photographer, mine being Ansel Adams. This type of assignment has its value in that if you really examine a photographer's work and study his (or her) approach you start to view your own world as they view theirs. This opens you up to new ways of seeing and thinking about the world around you. For instance, Ansel Adams was a popular nature photographer who photographed "in the raw." By this, I mean he photographed scenes without any kind of pre-or post-processing tricks. And he also always tried to capture interesting, natural plays between light and shadow. In the landscape image above you can see this ideal in how the light diffuses as it passes through the clouds and reflects off of the water's surface.
The second image above is mine of a canal in Amsterdam. Here I tried to look for interesting plays between light and shadow, reflections, and his same use of perspective. Unfortunately, it was a very cloudy day and I was not able to get the same kind of light in the clouds but I did get some play off of the water and in the windows. I had thought about faking the cloud effect by using photoshop tricks but ultimately decided that such a trick would be dishonest and not in line with the ideals of Ansel Adams. I leave it to you to decide whether or not my photo is a successful imitation of Ansel Adams' approach.
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