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In the Tripod Footprints of Ansel Adams
Fr. Dale Peterka
The first thing you see is the face of Half Dome, shining in the late afternoon sun. The low illumination highlights every detail. Across the valley to your left is the shaded silhouette of Washington Column. Between the two shapes, shining white in the evening sky, is the nearly full moon.
Ansel Adams found the scene at the eastern end of Yosemite Valley, in 1963, and reached for his ever ready Hasselblad. Parking his car, he took camera and tripod and walked into the meadow, looking for the exact spot where the three elements would come together and the composition would be perfect. Orange filter. Modest telephoto. Careful metering.
The photograph he took that day became a classic --certainly one of the best loved and most famous black-and-white pictures ever made. Today it bears the title “Moon And Half Dome” and is available in books and posters.
And for the thousands who visit Yosemite National Park with a camera every year, there is always the hope that they can duplicate the picture of the moon and the mountain. “The shot that Ansel Adams made!”
In his book, Examples; The Making of Forty Photographs, Adams tells how he made the shot.
If you want to try for the same scene, there are three elements that must come together for you to be successful. They are: the light, the moon, and the shadow.
The light shining on the face of Half Dome is the easiest of the three; it is present most days in Yosemite the year round. The face of Half Dome, however, looks nearly north, so the crisp, detailed illumination of the Adams shot occurs only when the afternoon sun has come around from behind Glacier Point and is shining up the length of the Valley. Your rule of thumb should be: don’t take pictures of Half Dome before 3:00 or 4:00 pm!
Close examination shows that the moon in the famous scene is less than full; it’s not a perfect circle. The sunshine on the cliffs confirms the fact; the full moon, which is 180 degrees across the sky from the sun, rises as the sun sets. Ansel’s moon is ten or twenty degrees above the horizon; it had risen an hour or two before sunset. If you try to duplicate the scene with a full moon, the mountain will be dark by the time the moon is high enough.
But the nearly-full moon does not always appear at that exact spot. Adams reports that he was on his way to the Ahwahnee Hotel to rehearse for the famous Bracebridge Dinner when he noticed the moon and the sun shining on Half Dome. He made his famous photograph in December!
The shadow at the base of Half Dome is likewise present only in December. Of course evening shadows can be seen and photographed the rest of the year too; don’t skip this shot just because you came in the wrong month! But to capture the scene just as Adams saw it, you will have to come at Christmastime!
Where to stand? Where to place your tripod? The Adams shot was made at the far end of a large meadow near the Ahwahnee Hotel. The road Adams was using has now become a paved walkway. You can come in the back way from the visitor’s center, park just outside the gate to the hotel grounds and walk a hundred yards south toward Glacier Point, with the meadow on your left, to the spot where Adams placed his tripod. Use the walkway! The meadow is still recovering from the devastation caused during a rock concert back in 1970.
What exposure setting? Bracket your shots!
Bracketing can be a crutch for photographers who are not sure of themselves. As such, the technique has a bad reputation, and you may be tempted to turn your nose up at the practice. Nevertheless, for those who don’t plan to visit Yosemite every year, it is smart to shoot backup shots of important scenes. Even the great Ansel did it on occasion. Accidental movement, an errant bird, a flaw in the film, a spot of dust—it doesn’t take much to ruin a once-in-a-lifetime shot.
The light for the famous Moonrise is a difficult mix. It will fool your automatic camera! Please don’t “point-and-shoot” this scene. Bracket your shots.
Envision the results you want and expose for them. The moon should be white, but the lunar features should be visible. The foreground meadow and rugged Washington Column should be black but show some detail. And the face of the mountain should be dark enough to emphasize the gleaming sunlit clefts and fissures.
For your first shot, meter the meadow (which is in shadow) and set the camera to underexpose it two stops. Ansel Adams called this “placing the foreground on zone III”. Since the mountain, the sky and the moon are lighter, they ought to fall neatly into the higher zones.
For your second shot, meter the sky and set the camera to underexpose it one stop, placing it on Ansel’s zone IV (deep gray). Remember, the effect you want is the moon shining in a dark sky. You can’t get that effect if the sky is light gray.
For the third shot, meter the face of the cliff –very difficult with the huge sky and the dark foreground interfering- and place it on zone five (average gray, a normal exposure).
If your built-in, thru-the-lens lightmeter has served you well in the past, use it for your fourth shot. Then take another shot with the compensator set on –1.
You may want to consider using a yellow filter to darken the sky and the shadows. --You are shooting black-and-white, aren’t you? Be sure to open the diaphragm an extra stop to compensate for the filter.
The results will be varied, but one of your shots should be a winner! Naturally you will not be content to make a small print for the family album! Your effort deserves an 11x14 enlargement and a place on the wall. For this you need a crisp negative and fine grained film. An ordinary 35mm cam-era can handle the job nicely, but the slow film, the filter and the lateness of the day demand the use of a tripod! Remember, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime shot! Especially if you live in Schenectady or Cincinnati!
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