nikonbug wrote:
I red that he shot it on a ladder. So what difference would 10 feet elevation make? Maybe a lot, and maybe not...
In fact, Adams had a platform built on top of his car that he often used to set up and shoot. Comes in handy when you need to "shoot over" things in the immediate foreground.
Keep in mind that he used large format cameras and it's always a rather slow, deliberate process working with those. This "twilight" shot probably needed to be done as quickly as possible... things change and disappear so rapidly that time of day.
Oh, and the actual title of the 1941 image is "
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico". (I.e, not "moonlight over".)
There's long been dispute whether that was caught in a single image, with filters or whatever. The contrast range of the moon itself and light from the just-set sun on the mountains, clouds and some other middle ground objects at one extreme, and the dark shadows and sky at the other extreme are beyond the dynamic range typically possible with either film or digital! All the dodging and burning in the world can only do so much.
Apparently the image is on a single negative... but was that made in a single shot? Or was it a composite from two different images? Or a multiple exposure of some sort?
Adams himself has said he made two exposures.... but the moment was very fleeting and light was no longer on the white crosses by the time he was able to set up for the second.
Also, his first description of the image when it was published in a 1943 magazine relates how he used his Weston light meter to calculate the settings. But, later when describing his process in his book "Examples" (1983), he says he couldn't find his meter and just used previous knowledge and the Zone system to determine his settings.
There also has been some dispute (as if it really matters!) of the exact date and time the image was taken, which apparently can be determined by the position of the moon, sun, lens focal length, etc. At various times it was noted as having been taken in 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1944. One person calculated the date and and time as October 31, 1941, at 4:03 p.m. Later analysis instead places it as 4:49:20 p.m. on November 1, 1941. Upon review, the second is thought to be correct.