On this day, November 1, 1941, Ansel Adams shot "Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico."

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico


Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico is a black and white photograph taken by Ansel Adams, late in the afternoon on November 1, 1941, from a shoulder of highway US 84 / US 285 in the unincorporated community of Hernandez, New Mexico. The approximate location where the image was taken is 36.057186°N 106.116974°W.

The photograph shows the Moon rising in a dominating black sky above a collection of modest dwellings, a church and a cross-filled graveyard, with snow-covered mountains in the background. Adams captured a single image, with the dying second of sunset lighting the white crosses and buildings. Art historian H. W. Janson called the photograph "a perfect marriage of straight and pure photography".

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Creation

In October 1941, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes hired Adams for six months to create photographs of lands under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior, for use as mural-sized prints for decoration of the department's new Interior Museum. Adams was accompanied by his young son Michael and his best friend Cedric Wright on a long road trip around the west. They came upon the scene while traveling through the Chama River valley toward Española in late afternoon on November 1 (see section "Dating", below); accounts of what transpired differ considerably.


An example of a Weston exposure meter. An average light reading is obtained from the device and the arrow on the circular panel is rotated across the value, yielding a range of aperture and shutter speed combinations that would properly expose the scene.

The initial publication of Moonrise was at the end of 1942, with a two-page image in U.S. Camera Annual 1943, having been selected by the "photo judge" of U.S. Camera, Edward Steichen. In that publication, Adams gave this account:

It was made after sundown, there was a twilight glow on the distant peaks and clouds. The average light values of the foreground were placed on the "U" of the Weston Master meter; apparently the values of the moon and distant peaks did not lie higher than the "A" of the meter ... Some may consider this photograph a "tour de force" but I think of it as a rather normal photograph of a typical New Mexican landscape. Twilight photography is unfortunately neglected; what may be drab and uninteresting by daylight may assume a magnificent quality in the halflight between sunset and dark.

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[Walleye]

1. Damn! I had one of those Weston meters. Makes me feel old

[AndyS]

2. So did I! nt

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Thanks for the bit of photographic history and the photo too!

It is justly famous.

[MichaelSoE]

4. I am so old school I have an app called lightmeter on my phone.

Cameras and phone do their readings on reflected light and sometimes I feel the need to make on exposure based on an incidental reading. I also make adjustments of exposure based on his zone system.