Customer Reviews

American Experience: Ansel Adams

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A captivating entry in the "American Experience" PBS series, "Adams" vividly brings to life the biographical details and working methods of this groundbreaking 20th-century photographer. An accomplished concert pianist, Adams gave up this path to pursue his vision of nature's beauty by illuminating Yosemite's Kings Canyon as it had never been seen before. With great sensitivity to Adams's process, specifically how he achieved the distinctive look of his photos, Burns handles his subject with understated reverence, profiling the artist-as-environmentalist. Adams changed forever the way we view wilderness, and this beautiful film tells us why--and why he and his legacy still matter.

A stunningly beautiful biography.
I challenge any one to watch this and not shed tears for the beauty of this continent, and for what we have done and continue to do to it.
So many intensely fine photos of deep wilderness and sublime natural perfection matched by sensitive narration.
This film is a great work of art, and one of the most moving and gorgeous documentaries I have ever seen.
Ansel would approve...and his standards were the very highest.

I recently saw an exhibit of Adams' work and wanted to learn more about him. Saw this older film (from my public library) and was blown away. Beautifully done and extremely moving. Seeing his work on the screen is no substitute for seeing the real thing in a museum or gallery. but it is a wonderful additional piece to fill in a complete portrait of his life and work. Every American should see this film and (hopefully) see his work in person.

This is a great documentary and so nicely presented. It is done by Ric Burns which, in and of itself, lets you know it is a quality piece of work. If you are interested at all in the life and work of Ansel Adams, you will really enjoy this. One aspect that it touches on, for instance, is that Ansel was originally going to go to school for music, as he was a very talented pianist. He changed his mind and went to the mountains instead and with that decision, changed the history of photography and the way we all look at photography & nature today. Aren't we all the better for it? I also came away from this film with something extra: A love of the music played in it and deciding to purchase the soundtrack (which is available on CD). It is also outstanding; a wonderful surprise which, whenever I listen, reminds me of seeing the film about this wonderful man and his relationship with the vastness of nature and how he shared it with all of us. Highly recommended.

Boy am I out of step when I compare my reaction to most of the others in this thread. You see, I am reviewing the movie, not Ansel Adams, and I find Ric Burns' film cold and unmoving once one removes oneself from the power of Adams' work. Burns benefits from the Kuleshov experiment in which the intercutting of still images produces an effect unrelated to the individual shots themselves. In this case, Burns' marvelous writing, interviewing, and interview subjects go on and on about Adams and his work but there is precious little specific discussion of the works that we're seeing at the time. A few -- the moon over graveyard, moon over Half Dome -- are addressed, and that's a strength, but minimal explanation is given to Adams' technique of burning/dodging prints, his filters, his camera, and even the tonal range of B&W film. If this had been about Rembrandt we would have had a thorough explanation of his brush strokes, pigments, and process. But somehow Adams' work takes place in the realm of magic. I don't have that much of a problem with panning and scanning the photos, except that the movement seldom ties in with the narration, it's just to keep the screen alive. David Ogden Stiers' narration is delivered with boring regularity, dropping the ends of sentences as if being merely perfunctory, until he becomes annoying. Worse, the breathtaking (and undoubtedly expensive) color helicopter shots over Adams' beloved Yosemite have nothing, of course, to do with Adams (color, moving, aerial) and serve to undercut the master's work at every bank. In the end, this documentary says everything about the man but explains little of how he achieved his results.

The documental DVD talks about the important photographer Ansel Adams, very sensitive about the places he walked with his cameras and lenses, filters. He has an experiencie about each photograph that he published and talks about. This DVD should have subtitles, also in other languajes.

Ansel Adams is a great video. After seeing a showing of his pictures at a Tucson Museum we got excited about learning more about him. He was truly a blessing to our country both in his photographs and his work in protection of our beautiful environment. This is a very educational film and very enjoyable. If you see it, try to find a place to view his photography.

I wanted this biography because it includes many of Adams' most famous photographs and it describes the lengths he went to to get them. It's a great story in addition to being beautiful.

This DVD contains video that was directly copied from the PBS "American Experience" program. You can tell it was not touched up or enhance their fixed or anything else. I suspect that they were not planning on people having 46 inch televisions. The credits in the beginning part of the program are really fuzzy. But when it gets down to talking about Adams he gets down to talk about Adams and many of the photographs mysteriously get sharper. We get so engrossed in the subject matter both Adams and his pictures that we know longer care one way or the other were sharp or not.

My only complaint is that it was in a soundbite form. I don't know who designed the program that but they could have focused on one person or another instead of person A, and B, and C, and a, and B, and c, again and again and so forth so forth so forth. It breaks the continuity of thought.

For me the experience is enhanced because I've been to most of these places several times. I hope to go back again. I've also been intrigued with the mechanics of photography before it became the digital age. I'm now still interested in digital photography. But photography aside by the time that you get to the end of this program you will feel that you've lost your only friend.

This presentation gave me a different way of looking at life and being conservative with what nature has brought us.

American Experience: The Wizard of Photography

We are not allowed to see the photographs as Adams shot them. What we see instead are moving fragments as we are constantly subjected to panning, tilting and zooming in and out. We never see the photographs in total and get to watch them as Adams cropped them. It is like going through a photographic exhibition on a roller coaster.