An Inevitable Photograph

We were sailing southward along the highway not far from Espanola when I glanced to the left and saw an extraordinary situation—an inevitable photograph!

aNSEL aDAMS in Examples: The Making of Forty Photographs

Ansel’s story of the making of what is perhaps his most famous photograph, “Moonrise, Hernandez,” is the stuff of legends. If you are not familiar with the story, take a moment to read it. Seeing the incredible scene out the car window, Ansel says he nearly “ditched” the car trying to pull off the road. He set up his 8×10 camera as quickly as possible, made some quick exposure calculations in his head, and managed to expose a single negative before the light vanished!

Without comparing myself to Ansel Adams, I have experienced a similar situation on an evening drive with my wife when we saw this scene unfold in dramatic fashion. It was probably the third time that I told her to stop the car so I could jump out and take some more photos when I captured this image. It was a rare moment of “Magic Light,” and I just happened to be in the right spot at the right time.

Of course, unlike Ansel, I didn’t have to frantically search for a light meter or load a film holder, and I was able to capture multiple exposures in quick succession, including this one with a bird in flight through the sunbeam! A faster shutter would have helped, but otherwise, does it get any better for a landscape photographer?

The color version of this photo is stunning (if I do say so myself), but with the dramatic side light, storm clouds, and amazing contrasts in the scene, I knew this image could also manifest as an equally (or perhaps even more) stunning black and white. My initial efforts in Lightroom were disappointing, although I was on the right track. Later on, this Lightroom version would provide the inspiration I needed to achieve the vision for this photo.

I tried again in Photoshop with B&W Artisan Pro, starting from scratch with the raw file in Lightroom. I like this version of the image-it is a nice black and white photo but it just doesn’t capture the moment. I was too heavy handed with the shadows and failed to control the contrast with subtlety, and I missed opening up the highlights. At the time, I felt that this image was beyond my capability to process, and I didn’t have a clear vision of what I wanted to achieve-I just knew that this was not it.

Some months later, after completing my “Ten Photos in Ten Days” exercise plus a couple more challenging photos, I felt ready to attempt to realize this image once again. After a promising start, I got stuck again, having essentially created the same photo as before but with better control of the shadows. It was still missing the “oomph.” That’s when I looked back at my earlier Lightroom edit, and the fantastic light in the sky behind the butte slapped me in the face! Suddenly I had a clear picture in my mind of the image I wanted to create from this photo.

Ansel Adams continued working on his interpretation of Moonrise, Hernandez throughout his life. As he describes, the negative was “quite difficult” to print, and he said that it was difficult to produce prints that he liked, even after he intensified the negative some years later. Over the decades his prints of this image became more tonally dramatic with deeper shadows and brighter highlights resulting in the masterpiece we are familiar with today. Without a doubt, Ansel’s challenges in capturing the photo, developing the negative, and creating the prints were far greater than what we face in the modern era of photography; but it gives me some encouragement to know that a great master such as Ansel sometimes struggled to create the images that he envisioned, even of an Inevitable Photograph!