America The Beautiful - How Ansel Adams Designed his Landmark Landscapes
When was the last time a photograph made you cry? In a time when we are constantly bombarded with ads, images, AI generated videos, and social media posts, we are seemingly locked in a never-ending process of visual media consumption. Unfortunately, some, if not most of this media is superficial and leaves viewers “unbored” yet empty. So, let us reflect, as people so deeply acquainted with images and photographs, have we had a genuinely emotional experience seeing one recently? I thought articles here were supposed to be about engineering design! Is crying over a photograph going to make me a better designer?! Bear with me, dear reader, I think you’ll find this article interesting and insightful.
Photography is powerful. What once was purely a form of documentation, archiving the world around us since 1819 [1], grew beyond simply conveying what the photographer saw to another individual, to conveying what they felt. Photographers began manipulating tones, intentionally crafting compositions and the position of elements, and turning towards more interesting subjects to capture. What was once deemed purely archival repetition grew to something new. Photographers banded together and developed styles and methods in an attempt to establish photography as an art form as early as 1885 [2].
Figure 1: Moonlight: The Pond. Photo by Edward Stelchen (1904). Early example of photograph demonstrating hazy, atmospheric look common in the mid to late 1800s.
Subject posing and darkroom processing led these images to resemble popular painting styles of the time. At the turn of the century, proponents of this more artistic approach to photography moved away from softer, hazier images to sharper ones. Camera technology progressed from plates to film, and darkroom techniques developed further, giving photographers even more tonal control of the photographs they captured. One master, proponent, and innovator of these techniques and style, perhaps the most well-known American photographer, was Ansel Adams.
Ansel Adams, a professional musician turned photographer, was an avid outdoorsman, environmental activist, and technical master [3]. Developing what many consider to be the most influential methods and techniques of photography, Adams was ever attentive in perfecting his craft. Ansel Adams’ principles of designing landscape photographs, whether by an empathetic perspective, framing and composition, or vision driven innovations, were revolutionary. This article highlights these three critical concepts found in Ansel Adams’ work and life and show how they can be revolutionary in our own design efforts as engineers!
Figure 2: Ansel Adams Portrait. Photo by J. Malcom Greany, (1950).
Empathetic Perspective
What do I mean by an “empathetic perspective?” First, we need to recognize that understanding yourself and your audience is critical to photography design and engineering design. In the American Annual of Photography, 1944, Adams described a great photograph as “...a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, … [and] a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety” [4]. He had a deeply emotional connection to the photographs he was taking. His objective was not to chronicle what he saw, but to convey exactly to a viewer what he felt as he saw it. Connected to this concept is a practice Adams called “previsualization.”
Figure 3: Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park, by Ansel Adams (1927). After dangerously ascending, Adams approached for the third time the face of Half Dome, waiting hours for the exact lighting he intended to capture.
A method deeply rooted in the design process, previsualization involves understanding the technical elements that would need to align to produce an intended result. For Adams, this meant understanding all the technical aspects of photography, combined with all the natural elements of his subject, perfectly meshing with the emotional experiences he had in that moment, to then be conveyed to others to have their own emotional experience with the image. He understood how he felt frequenting many Western American vistas and could anticipate and understand the emotional experience others would have via his photographs. A patron in a gallery is to Adams what a stakeholder is to the engineer. A stakeholder’s experience with whatever we design is critical to our success as designers, just as it was critical to Adams’ personal initiative. In Chris Mattson’s first article in a series on Design Thinking, he describes empathy as key to developing impactful solutions to problems. He expounds that the necessary empathy is as much an understanding of ourselves as it is the stakeholders we are attempting to serve. Avoiding personal bias towards one solution or another, through an understanding of an individual’s experience with a real problem, leads to the right decisions [5].
Framing and Composition
Let’s see how composition can improve our engineering skills. In photography, composition (a key art and design principle) is the careful consideration of the location of elements within a frame of reference, and their relationships with one another. Successful compositions convey emotion, tell stories, and direct the attention of a viewer with intention. Some common composition techniques include: leading lines, parallel lines, the rule-of-thirds, symmetry and asymmetry, tension and stability, golden ratios, just to name a few [6]. Adams’ piece, “Tetons and the Snake River,” shows deliberate use of compositional techniques, drawing a viewer’s gaze up the winding river towards the Teton focal point. The river itself forms an overall triangular form, pointing directly at the central mountain face. His clever manipulation of light in the sky also creates a glow behind the sharp mountain peaks, further accenting the area, and giving the far off slopes a greater presence in the overall image.
Figure 4: Tetons and the Snake River, by Ansel Adams (1942)
This photo tells a story. It conveys emotion. There is a motion to it, despite it being static visual media. A successful engineer, implementing some of these same compositional techniques, can produce better, longer-lasting solutions to problems. Well communicated solutions to problems, those that can be intuitively understood, are inherently more impactful. In product design, for example, the form of a product (like a photograph’s composition) visually and tangibly communicates to an end user how it functions. Catalina Johnson discusses the user needs being a driving force in the ultimate form of a product. As one considers the everyday uses of the product they are designing, they are led to craft intentional forms that support and enable these daily uses. A user more effortlessly engages with the product because its forms, lines, and features intentionally draw attention and communicate meaning [7].
Vision Driven Innovation
Just as engineering design has many phases and elements, simply taking a photograph is just one small part of a much larger methodology. After a plate or film in a camera is exposed, it needs to be processed in a darkroom, where film negatives are enlarged onto paper through exposure to light and various chemicals. While practices did exist for photograph processing, what Adams sought didn’t. Modern photography is deeply indebted to him for this fact. Driven by a desire to express deeply emotional experiences within his work, Adams and contemporary Fred Archer spent many hours in the darkroom, ultimately inventing a classification of tonal values called “The Zone System,” [8].
Figure 5: Diagram demonstrating The Zone System, defined by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer in the 1940s. Courtesy of Alex Gubski Photography.
Figure 6: Northern California Coast Redwoods by Ansel Adams (1960). Details in direct light and within shadows that otherwise would be lost are carefully brought into view through tonal rebalancing.
With tonal values ranging from 0 (total black in print) to 10 (maximum white value), along with new methods of chemical and light manipulation to change the tonal values of different portions of a film negative, Adams had gained the control necessary to create the emotion he desired. Adams used its repeatable, dependable process to design many of his greatest works. As designers, there are countless methodologies, forms of analysis, systems, and processes that can be used to take our solutions from out of our heads and into reality. Good designers use their technical know-how to produce beautiful and practical solutions that convey meaning to and perform a given function for those impacted by said solution. Like Ansel Adams, clear vision can be the vehicle for new inspiration and better designs. In John Salmon’s final article in a series discussing the book “The Ten Faces of Innovation,” he shares the practice of communicating directly with stakeholders [9]. In this case, a biomedical device company invited users of their product to talk directly to the engineers who designed that product, to share how their lives had been impacted by the lifesaving device. Just imagine the lengths those engineers would go in creating new and better solutions, because they had clear vision, following that experience. The drive to produce photographs in a particular way led Adams to pioneer unique technical methodologies for photo development. The same is possible for all of us as engineers and designers. The fire of technological innovation follows inspiration, and a clear vision helps light the match.
Final Thoughts
Ansel Adams was an exceptional photographer, deeply curious observer, practical scientist, and master communicator. His reliance on core principles in his work directly resulted in masterpieces. His willingness to push the limits of photography provided many opportunities for innovation and advancement of its craft and practice. Adams was an artist, but in many ways, he was also a scientist. Not only did his efforts to empathize with his audience, ground his work in core design principles of composition and form, and follow his vision by pushing the limits in the dark room cement him as the great master he was, but it defined him as a unique case study that designers from all backgrounds should examine. As design engineers, we shouldn’t be afraid to “peek behind the curtain” of other design related fields. While we may speak different technical languages, the foundational principles of design are universal; and we will be at a great advantage to learn from such influential knowledge. So, reader, who will you allow to inspire your next innovation?
Figure 7: Leaves, Mt. Rainier by Ansel Adams (1942). Though not his traditional landscape, the fractal leaves and delicate foliage captured here have long been a personal favorite of the author.
References
[1] Dam, Peter. "History of the Camera: When was Photography Invented?", August 15, 2023, https://www.adorama.com/alc/camera-history/
[2] Aaron Hetzmann. "How Photography Became an Art Form.", July 23, 2018, https://medium.com/@aaronhertzmann/how-photography-became-an-art-form-7b74da777c63
[3] William Turnage. "Ansel Adams, Photographer - Bio.", https://articles.anseladams.com/ansel-adams-bio/#:~:text=Adams%27s%20technical%20mastery%20was%20the,matched%20and%20expressed%20that%20visualization
[4] Fraprie, Frank R., and Franklin I. Jordan, editors. The American Annual of Photography 1944: Volume Fifty-Eight
[5] Mattson, Chris. “Design Thinking Part 1: Basic Concepts and Principles.” The BYU Design Review, 21 Jul. 2021, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/design-thinking-part-1-basic-concepts-and-principles
[6] Anton Gorlin. "Photography Composition: The Definitive Guide.", September 8, 2018, https://antongorlin.com/blog/photography-composition-definitive-guide/#composition-concept-and-principles
[7] Johnson, Catalina. “Lenses to Interpret the Visual Form of Products and Why it Matters.” The BYU Design Review, 9 Jul. 2020, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/lenses-to-interpret-the-visual-form-of-products-and-why-it-matters
[8] Alexander Gubski. "Ansel Adams - the Pioneer.", https://alexgubski.com/ansel-adams-photography
[9] Salmon, John. “The Tenth Face of Innovation: The Storyteller.” The BYU Design Review, 8 Nov. 2021, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/the-tenth-face-of-innovation-the-storyteller
To cite this article:
Scullin, Hunter. “America The Beautiful - How Ansel Adams Designed his Landmark Landscapes.” The BYU Design Review, 8 July 2025, https://www.designreview.byu.edu/collections/america-the-beautiful-how-ansel-adams-designed-his-landmark-landscapes.
