ansel adams.

His birthday is today, and I came across this wonderful, abbreviated biography.

Though I got slightly annoyed at being compared to him on Flickr from a photographic standpoint (which was a major factor I feel in my somewhat sudden loss of interest with black and white photography a couple of years ago – not the comparisons made on Flickr – but rather my own self-perception that I was indeed a complete hack of a photographer and so the comparisons were thus in effect true).

But anywhoo ... regardless of that rather inconsequential stuff, I have always been and will always remain indebted to him for spurring in me the initial zealousness for photography as well as his own contributions – though perhaps now considered cliché (and just to clarify I do not share that opinion) – were ground-breaking and inspiring at the time of their conception and still remain wholly valid on their own today. He was without a doubt a master, and his technical mastery and leadership of the early conservation movement are a legacy separate from his photographs which is quite enough. Through any number of ways, he has inspired generations of photographers and his legacy will live on (almost literally) forever (his photograph of the Tetons and Snake River is included on the Golden Records that are attached to Voyagers I and II as an example to potential intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe the beauty that the Earth holds and that at least some of humanity ultimately respects).