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Teton Range and Snake River, by Ansel Adams (Image credit: Ansel Adams \/ Smith Collection \/ Gado \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
But for photographers like myself who wish they could see those same striking scenes in color, I think you’ll find inspiration in the work of Galen Rowell<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rowell (1940-2002) was a landscape photographer who published in major outdoor magazines, most notably National Geographic, and his excellent color stills inspire a real sense of adventure. While I absolutely love looking at Adams\u2019 work, it just doesn\u2019t feel as immersive as when I admire Rowell\u2019s.<\/p>\n For me, landscape photography is all about depicting the raw beauty of nature, and black-and-white photography just doesn\u2019t do this to the same extent as color.<\/p>\n Granted, things like textures, leading lines, and layers in the scene are probably even better pronounced in black and white, but color images give me a sense of how it would feel to be standing where the photographer was.<\/p>\n \n Paine National Park, Chile, by Galen Rowell (Image credit: Galen Rowell \/ Corbis \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n I\u2019m not saying Rowell composed better images than Adams. On the contrary, Rowell was greatly inspired by Adams, even being dubbed the \u201c35mm Ansel Adams.\u201d<\/p>\n Rowell\u2019s landscape photography, which often featured mountains, was seen by some as a modern evolution of Adams\u2019 traditional monochrome approach. Born nearly 40 years after Adams, Rowell’s gear of choice was typically a portable 35mm SLR, like the Nikon<\/a> F5. “Ninety percent of my best life’s work could have been made with a manual body, a 24mm lens, and a telephoto zoom in the 80-200mm range,” he once wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n Grand Canyon National Park, by Ansel Adams (Image credit: Ansel Adams \/ Smith Collection \/ Gado \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n Interestingly, there are at least 3,500 color stills that Adams created, mostly on commercial assignments throughout the 1940s and 1950s, primarily with Kodachrome. However, he often found the process lacked the creative control and precision of black and white, calling it an \u201cout-of-tune piano.\u201d<\/p>\n Adams\u2019 color photos aren\u2019t that easy to come by, as the originals weren\u2019t published until 1993, when a small selection was included in that year\u2019s edition of his book, Ansel Adams in Color<\/a>, which you can still buy. Of course, you can find digitally remastered color versions of his famous black-and-white shots all over the internet.<\/p>\n \n Sunrise Behind Mitten Buttes by Galen Rowell (Image credit: Galen Rowell \/ Corbis \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n I find it fascinating that Adams saw color photography as a frustration rather than the gift it has been in enabling such rich and emotionally inspiring landscape photography. I wonder if he would\u2019ve felt the same had he discovered photography in the digital age, when color was already the standard and black and white a niche.<\/p>\n
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