AOW #5: Retracing the Steps of Ansel Adams

collection: Retracing The Steps of Ansel Adams

The purpose of the six pictures in Peter Essick’s collection featured on NPR, a publicly-funded world news source, is to honor the deceased famous photographer named Ansel Adams, who, like Essick currently, was a valued photographer for National Geographic. Essick’s black-and-white photographs in the collection mirror scenes of Adams’ own photographs. Judging by the number of comments expressing praise and appreciation for the beauty of the purpose and the beauty of the pictures, Essick’s purpose was accomplished.

Essick is trying to appeal to a wide audience of people from many different locations; this is apparent from the content of nature scenes from all over the world, which lets many people connect to them especially if they have been to the sites being featured, and from the context of being featured on a news website that is well-known to and viewed by many people all over the world.

Rhetorical Elements included:

• the pictures flow together well and are pleasing to the eye because each has a similarity to the one before and after it in the order: The first picture shows mountain ranges covered in snow, which relates to the second one that depicts dirt-covered mountains 
• the repetition of the contrasting black-and-white subjects in the pictures (the lighter mountains juxtapose the black sky in Picture 2, and the black trees juxtapose the white background in Picture 3) stresses the tone of reflection and commemoration