Yosemite with Ansel Adams' son

Is this going to be good enough? You want to get out of the sun? No, this is fine. These little cameras pick up really well. What's really neat is you're going to be seeing rural Nevada Falls and you're going to see, you're going to be as close to the backcountry of Yosemite as you get this time of year without really being in it. And you're, you know, it's such a spectacular place up there. Oh yeah. And there are a number of places that Ansel loved and we'll certainly go to those. You can look for his tripod holes. So you're Ansel Adam's son? Yes. And we're standing in front of the Ansel Adams Gallery. How long has this. Because this gallery's been here as long as I've been coming to Yosemite. I'll give you a very brief history.

Sure.

My grandfather, my mother's father, Harry Best was a landscape painter and he came to Yosemite in 1901 to paint with a friend of his and he met a young lady, an attractive young lady and in whirlwind courtship they were married under Bridaldale Falls in 1901 on July 28th and they stopped a stagecoach coming in from Wawona to invite them all for champagne and celebrate the event. And there was a two page spread and I think it's the San Francisco examiner of that year about this. And anyway they were married then and they came back the next year and opened a gallery in a tent and sold his paintings for the next until 1926 because 1926 they had a place over in the old village and in 27 they opened here in this site and up until about 1927 it was pretty much a summer only job. After they opened this to build a home behind which shouldn't say a home, a cabin, a place to stay. And then it became a year round operation and he lived here. He lived until 1936 and then my mom dad took it on and then when they wanted were kind of ready to deal, not not didn't want to deal with the National Park Service and the being up here. In 1971 my wife and I took it on and we changed the name to the Ansel Adams Gallery. So but it's been in existence as a business since 1902 in the same family that 106 years in Yosemite and our children, the fourth generation of the Best Adams family is now running it. It's crazy, you know, I've been doing A lot of traveling around the world. And I was in Israel last week and I was bragging that I was going to meet you. And people are like, even in Israel, their eyes get wide. Well, we've had Absel Adams shows in Israel. Yeah. Did he find a place? Yeah, he's on his way. Okay. Yeah. Your brand, Ansel Adams. You know, the idea of Ansel Adams is just so worldwide right now. There's shows going on in London or in Oxford actually, and that's scheduled to travel. And there are others, half a dozen shows out there going all around the States. Yeah. Where's the biggest permanent collection right now? That's Tom Sachs. The. Our family probably has the largest collection of originals, but there's a tremendous collection at University of Arizona and the center for Creative Photography. That's where his archive is. Oh, true. So there's tremendous numbers there. But as far as the overall collection, we in the family probably have it. Sure. Most of it's on walls here. They're stored away. Somebody I'm including a galleries inventory. Somebody yesterday said that it was quite controversial when the University of Arizona got the collection. Right? Well, because it was, yes, but because Ansel would love to have it go to the Bancroft, which is University of California, Berkeley. And they. When he was ready to talk, they weren't really interested. And then he was talking to the chancellor of UC Santa Cruz in the original one of first started, they were interested and then he left and just happened that the president of the University of Arizona was in one of Ansel's workshops and they got talking and a year later or so they started saying, hey, now, would you like to bring your work down here? So they got. They put together, I think, five photographers. Edward Westman, Anselone, Wynne Bullock and there were a couple of others. And with that group of photographers willing to, you know, to put their collections into the university. University said yes. And they built an entire building. It's called the center for Creative Photography. How many photographs are in that building total? Do you have? Well, Insul's negatives? There's 40,000. Oh, wow.

Hi.

Pleasure. Good to see you finally. Sorry we're late. No, no, I understand. I understand. A lot of construction going on. The center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona has this huge archive. Yeah. So they have 40,000 of Ansel's. All of Ansel's negatives are there. I remember you read about that. Right. And access means. By the way, this is Sarah Bateman, works here at the gallery and she's doing a couple Pictures so we can put them on our blog. You guys don't mind, we'll send you. We know a thing or two about vlogging. We're happy to do whatever you guys want to do here. And one thing that's kind of unique, there's a workshop going on right now in our. What was a dark room originally, and it's still a dark room. Sarah runs these workshops, but there happens to be one this weekend. And I kind of said if you are interested at all in taking some pictures of the workshop space. Sure. That I'd knock on the door and ask him if it was. What kind of workshop is it?

It's a photography workshop. So right now it's called the Creative Black and White Process and It's with Ray McSavney. And Ray used to come up here in the 70s and take workshops from Ansel. And he's very close friends with their photographers who either took workshops up here.

Or served as Ansel's assistant in the.

70S, such as like John Sexton and Alan Roth. And so we have a group of five people plus an assistant that you're learning from right now. And what they're doing is field sessions where they go around Yosemite Valley to photograph and learn from the photographer as far as learning their exposures, compositions, any questions they have, they're up here doing print critiques of their work. They're also doing viewing photographers work so they can learn by looking at what this professional photographer has photographed and what is contained within his photograph. They are watching darkroom demonstrations and learning about printing and processing film and so forth.

Are they doing real film or are they doing digital?

For this workshop it is. So most of the people here are shooting on large format cameras for this workshop and they do traditional black and white printing back in the darkroom with our workshops, it varies. We have everything from digital workshops where you learn the basics of Photoshop to advanced Photoshop techniques where you come out and you shoot with a digital camera and you learn how to work with a digital camera to platinum palladium and what plate collideion printing. So everything.

Can anybody take some of these?

Yeah, anybody can.

And how do we find out about it?

Go to ampleadams.com we've got a photography workshop section. This year we are offering 15 workshops, but generally we offer about 30 per year. And next year we have a brand new facility here that we just renovated. And we're going to be really upping the numbers of workshops that we offer, offering new programs, new instructors. So it should be really exciting. Starting in January.

Very cool. Cool. Well, we're going to sit down and then get a longer interview on our HD cameras because it's a lot of fun. Looking forward to it.