Ansel Adams was a landscape photographer, writer, and environmentalist. His richly detailed black-and-white images, which mainly documented the great wilderness of the American West, have become icons of photography history. Adams's photographs inspire an appreciation for natural beauty and conservation that has been communicated down the generations. His ambition was not simply to record the landscape, but to capture his emotional and spiritual response to the wild areas that he loved so deeply. The results are spectacular: an emotional charge and passion shine through the prints with an intensity that is as powerful today as it was sixty years ago. The image 'The Tetons - Snake River' clearly shows Adams love for the scene. The landscape appears balanced because each aspect has equal weight. Its is the aptly named snake river, meandering through the countryside, that gives the photograph its focus. However, without the other aspects - the darkened mountains against the snowy peaks and the dark trees flanking the river - the scene simply would not have its impact, its calmness, and its solitude. Its peacefulness is captured by a slow shutter speed that has brought out the gentle ripples of the river in the foreground.

Reading:
http://www.anseladams.com/
http://www.anseladams.com/anseladams_biography_s/51.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams