When you’re an artist of some kind, there comes a time or two when you find yourself imitating one or more of the great masters of the past.  It doesn’t matter who you imitate or how.  It speaks to the level of skill you have been growing within yourself.  Recently, I found myself imitating one of the great masters.  Keep reading to find out who it was.

I’m glad you decided to stick around.  I found myself imitating Ansel Adams recently.  It wasn’t intentional.  It’s just how it ended up working out.  I’ll also tell you the story of how this came to be.

We recently took a trip out to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.  We had business out there and wanted to check the park out for ourselves.  I know the Teton mountains reasonably well from the Idaho side but also know that most of the shots you see are from the Wyoming side.  There’s a reason for this.

The mountains on the Wyoming side of the park are far more rugged and picturesque.  I took lots of photos of different mountains and landscape settings looking for that perfect photo for my portfolio.

When we got home, I got to processing up the best photos from the day.  On the list was a close-in shot of one of the Teton range, though not one of the “big three” Tetons.  It was a beautiful composition and the light on the mountains was perfect (hence why we stopped to take that photo to begin with).  The problem was the color.  It just wasn’t working in color.

One of my tricks for photos which don’t quite work in color is to try them in black and white.  There are enough times where this works that I keep trying it every so often.  This was one of those photos which was born to be in black and white.

When I completed processing it, I looked at the finished product and one thought crossed my mind: this photo looks like an Ansel Adams shot.