For all the heroes of the national parks we've covered on this podcast over nearly 200 episodes,

it's a wonder we haven't spent time with a photographer who brought the beauty, grandeur, and spirit of nature to the world, showing the need for preservation and

curating a desire for the nation to visit them.

I'm Jason Epperson and this is the America's National Parks Podcast.

Ansel Adams is, to be sure, the most famous photographer ever,

and his contributions to the natural world rival his innovations and artistry in his medium.

Adams had a long photography career and was an important figure in the American Conservation Movement.

During his life he photographed some of the most beautiful sites in America

and held dozens of gallery shows that promoted parks like the Grand Canyon.

But his church was Yosemite. Today the works of Ansel

Adams have been exhibited and distributed across the world from the Smithsonian

Institution in Washington DC to the Young Museum in San Francisco, to the Ansel Adams

Gallery, now located in the Yosemite Valley itself.

Here's Abbey. Ansel Adams was born in San Francisco in 1992 as the only child of Charles Hitchcock

Adams and Olivia Bray Adams.

The grandson of a wealthy timber Baron, Adams grew up in a house set amid the

sand dunes of the Golden Gate.

When Adams was only four, an aftershock of the great earthquake of 1906 threw him to the ground and badly broke his nose,

distinctly marking him for life. A year later the family fortune collapsed in the financial

panic of 1907,

an Adam's father spent the rest of his life

desperately attempting to rebuild, unsuccessfully.

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