Week Seven – Descriptive Photograph, 400 Words

This week I decided to choose an Ansel Adams photograph and describe why it is a descriptive photo. The photograph I chose was, “The Tetons and Snake River”, taken in 1942 in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. This photo is a very beautiful landscape of Snake River, which would fall under an aesthetically evaluative photography, however, it also falls under the category descriptive photography.

 I believe that Ansel Adams’s photograph “The Tetons and Snake River” is a great descriptive photograph because it literally is a map of the land. The photo describes the placement of the river, Grand Teton mountains, and trees of that particular area. Not only does it describe the objects in the photo but it can also describe the time of year based on the snow on top of the Grand Teton mountains, and possibly even the trees. When looking at this photograph, it is hard if not impossible to get anything more out of the photograph other then it is a landscape and it is very beautifully photographed. For this reason, I believe that the photograph of this landscape is descriptive and the beautiful aspect of the photograph is aesthetically evaluative.  Whether the photograph falls under one category more then the other is beside the point in my honest opinion. I agree Ansel Adams’s photography is some of the most beautifully shot photographs I have ever seen. However, the descriptiveness of the land and objects that he photographs are so well done because of his large format camera and his keen photographers eye. Using a large format camera allows Ansel Adams to have a very detailed photograph that can be enlarged to a very massive size so the viewer can see ever more detail of his amazing landscapes. And Ansel Adams framing always allows the viewer to see just enough of the scene so that they could easily point it out had they the ability to see this image in real life. Discrediting his ability to capture a piece of nature and have it be so detailed and perfectly fitting to the frame so that the viewer gets the whole scene, would be wrong. There is no doubt that Ansel Adams’s photography is dual categorized, and is an amazing example of both categories.