1902 - Ansel Easton Adams born on February 20, at 114 Maple Street, San Francisco, the only child of Olive and Charles

1915 - Despises the regimentation of a regular education, and is taken out of school. For that year, his father buys him a season pass to the Panama-Pacific Exposition, which he visits nearly every day. Private tutors provide further instruction.

1916: Family Trip to Yosemite, Californina.

1925: Decides to become a pianist. Buys a grand piano.

1927: First acknowledged photograph.

1940 - Teaches first Yosemite workshop, the U. S. Camera Photographic Forum, in Yosemite with Edward Weston.

1953 he collaborated with Dorothea Lange on a Life commission for a photo essay on the Mormons in Utah

In 1962 Adams moved to Carmel, California, where in 1967 he was instrumental in the foundation of the Friends of Photography

1984 - Dies April 22 of heart failure aggravated by cancer

A famous landscape- photographer (maybe the most famous) and founder of the "f/64 group" a group of photographers that used the smallest aperture in a lens to create sharply- and widely focused (landscape-) photographs.

Ought to read Co-founder of the f/64 group, and they weren't restricted to landscapes

Ansel Adams's fame rests on his being one of the premier pictorial photographers of all time. He was enormously influential in getting "pure" photography recognized as an art form in and of itself, rather than photography trying to mimic older art forms. His career concentrated on the American West, especially the Yosemite Valley, working almost exclusively for much of his lifework in very large format black and white. His crisp, rich, stunning pictures are seen all over to this day, on walls, calendars, place mats, books - simply everywhere. Adams's photographs set the benchmark for landscapes. They speak for themselves. They are absolutely, literally brilliant.

Part of the reason for their brilliance is Adams's development of what he called The Zone System, which is a little hard to describe but is a method for exposure and development of a black and white negative to insure total tonal detail from brightest highlight to the deepest shadow. Among many other works, Adams wrote three technical books detailing his methods entitled, appropriately, The Camera; The Negative; and The Print.

Adams was one of the founding members of the f/64 school or group, (sometimes called the f/64 club), a coterie of contemporary photographers who shared similar interests and goals. That association of some of the finest photographers of their generation led directly to the creation of the Museum of Modern Art's department of photography. f/64 refers to an extremely small f/stop or aperture in the lens which is intended to help insure the greatest depth of field - sharpness in an image from very near to very far. Many of Adams greatest photographs are characterized by this kind of near-to-far wire sharpness.

Adams was also a classical pianist, an avid environmentalist, and a dedicated teacher. He helped expand the National Parks System and The Sierra Club. Because of his musical background, he was often heard to refer to the negative as the "score" and the print as the "performance." He loved to go back into his archives and reprint older negatives as he refined his techniques throughout his life. He was a powerful proponent of the practice of "visualization," wherein the photographer should try to "see" the finished print in his mind's eye. He used to send students out with a large format camera and a single sheet of film as an exercise. They only got one shot, so they had to get it right.

Ansel Adams died April 22, 1984 of heart failure aggravated by cancer. He left his wife, Virginia, children Michael and Anne, and five grandchildren.