Ansel Adams is one of the most widely respected landscape photographers of all time. He is revered for his stunning black and white images of the western United States and his commitment to the conservation of the American wilderness. The Yosemite National Park was Adams’ main source of inspiration. He first went to Yosemite in 1916 and was transfixed by the beautiful valley. He took many great images of this part of the Sierra Nevada during his life, so when I visited the Yosemite National Park last month, I decided to create a black and white image of the Yosemite Valley in honor of him. In order to make perfect photographs, Ansel Adams was never adverse to use different techniques such as various lens-mounted filters as well as little dodging and burning in the darkroom to have rich shadows and detailed highlights. Fortunately, modern softwares like Adobe Lightroom allow us to use similar techniques to convert the RAW files into spectacular black and white images. While creating this particular photograph, I used a polarizer filter in the field to darken the sky, and beyond the basic adjusments in Lightroom to control the contrast of the image, I used the HSL/Color/B&W panel to modify color brightness for a really dramatic effect. I also used some adjusment brushes to fine-tune the final image a little further until I reached what I thought was an Ansel Adams-like photograph.

Gear: Canon EOS 7D, Canon 17-40mm F/4 lens, Tiffen Polarizer, Manfrotto tripod