having frequented this forum for quite a while, i know there are many very capab le and knowledgeable professionals here. i do not wish to offend any of you, bu t for a long time, i have harbored a certain distaste for the famous ansel adams - perhaps some of you can alter my point of view with some additional informati on. while i certainly can appreciate adams technical acheivements, and recogniz e that he created many dramatic images, when i read his books, there is a defini te thread of ego-centrism in his words that i do not enjoy. his mention of dona ting negatives to universities so that "others can learn from printing his negat ives" was one of the first things that caught me very early on. but it was not until i started seriously studying the history of photography that i realized ho w many of his images were little more than deriviative interpretations of earlie r photographers' work. i understand that we all do that to a certain extent, bu t mr adams, in his dissertations on how he created this image or that, never see ms to mention that the same shot was made by timothy o'sullivan 60 years earlier , or that a certain view of yosemite was essentially a copy of an image made by carleton watkins in the 1870s. this lack of homage to the pioneers from whose e xamples adams created his best work is very disappointing, and smacks of a great inner insecurity. IMHO, there are many photogrpahers who earn far higher marks from me for sheer artisitic vision, compositional skill, and yes, even technica l prowess. consider eduoard baldus, gustave legray, carleton watkins, pascal se bah, etc, who endured the primitive technology of wet plate photography, hand ma de lenses and cameras, who carried hundereds of pounds of equipment to the remot est parts of the world to create images that have never been equaled since. i w ould be interested in hearing some alternate points of view, or references to an ything you might have read where ansel does indeed recognize the heritage of his craft.