Happy Birthday Ansel!

Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite national park, California, about 1937

Ansel Adams has become almost synonymous with the environmental movement in general and Yosemite National Park in particular. He first visited the park when he was 14 and the impression he had at that age would last a lifetime. His photographs played a seminal role in convincing Congress to place that amazing landscape under federal protection.

Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space. I know of no sculpture, painting or music that exceeds the compelling spiritual command of the soaring shape of granite cliff and dome, of patina of light on rock and forest, and of the thunder and whispering of the falling, flowing waters…

— Ansel Adams, The Portfolios Of Ansel Adams

Adams would have been 111 today. His photographs are as ageless as the landscapes he captured.