Walking In The Shadow Of Ansel Adams

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Walking In The Shadow Of Ansel Adam

Yosemite Valley

Ansel's first impression of Yosemite valley was, in his words:

"That first impression of the valley --- white water, azaleas, cool fir caverns, tall pines and stolid oaks, cliffs rising to undreamed of heights, the poignant sounds and smells of the Sierra....was a culmination of experience so intense as to be almost painful. From that day in 1916 my life has been colored and modulated by the great earth-gesture of the Sierra." Ansel Adams, Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada (Boston, Houghton Milflin Company, 1948). xiv

After The Storm Tunnel View. Bridal Veil Falls

Yosemite Falls From the Valley Floor

Lower Yosemite Falls

Lower Yosemite Falls and Yosemite Creek

Lower Yosemite Falls

Bridal Veil Falls

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls

"It was my farewell to the Valley and its waters --- this hour in front of the great Upper Yosemite --- the mighty cataract, a third of a mile high which is perhaps the most beautiful of all. It seemed like some young Greek god, some athletic nude Achilles, standing there so slim and straight and tall, with his head in the sun and and his feet on the clouds...this fine lithe spirit, springing from the mountain, poised on the rock, alive with a thousand leaping pulses, chanting a song of a thousand echoes. In that long hour the splendid living thing became companionable and divinely kind. My little human life grew to its stature, throbbed with its force, sang with its music. For an hour I shared in the triumph with a pagan joy, sitting there in the sun on a ledge and watching the eternal rush and rest. Those glorious waters washed the whole world clean; I looked down and saw its sins dashed away over the rocks, I looked up and saw its perplexities float off in those climbing mists. And below me, as I swung my feet over the precipice, the valley lay fresh and pure, its silver ribbon of a river sparkling in the sun." --- Harriet Monroe (1860-1936), "Camping above the Yosemite---a Summer Outing with the Sierra Club." Sierra Club Bulletin VII:2 (June 1909): pp. 92-93.