Reaction Paper 4

Eli Hoversten

                When comparing the work between Ansel Adams and David Bayles, a person looks and sees many similarities in the work. For instance, you can tell right away that both Adams and Bayles love the outdoors and have decided to express it through their art.

                Ansel Adams Preferred to express his art through nature and more desert plains type of areas Facing mountains and rough terrain. For an example, the photograph entitled Mount Williamson, depicts a flat desert plain in the foreground with a range of mountains in the background. In the foreground, the earth is scattered with thousands of rocks, ranging in all sizes and appears to be impassible by any means of transportation except walking.

                David Bayles preferred to express himself through trees. He loves trees because they are a standstill part of nature and are not part of the “political propaganda.” His work was different then the work of Ansel Adams in that he took many of his photographs in a variety of cities booming with life. He photographed mainly trees, or plants of various sorts.

                In all of the differences that the two photographers had in their work, there are some similarities, they both used older cameras and some of Bayles work used slow shutter speeds, the same as most of Adams. Both artists also preferred images in black and white, although Adams may not have had a choice due to technology  limitations of the era of time in which he completed  most of his work.

                Overall, I think that I prefer Adams to Bayles because Adams traveled to farther away places to complete the photographs, and it depicts places that people in modern society do not usually get to see a lot of.