Adams began to photograph in colour in the mid-1930s. He did significant personal or 'creative' photography in colour and his distinctive visualisation of a scene and technical mastery is immediately evident in these photographs. Overall, he made nearly 3,500 colour images, but only a small fraction have ever been published.
Adams thought seriously about publishing his colour images but the task was not accomplished during his lifetime. The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust - with advice and counsel from John Szarkowski, former Director of Photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art; David Travis, Curator of Photographs at the Art Institute of Chicago and James Enyeart, former Director of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House--asked the distinguished master photographer Harry Callahan to select the best of Adams' colour work for publication in this book.