Miles Davis / In A Silent Way

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It was the early year of Covid and Steph and I had been living in New Albany, Ohio for five years since moving back here from California. Both of us had been bouncing back and forth between Ohio and California all our lives. I had just purchased a new tool (toy?) called a drone. I had seen some fly across the night sky above our village in the country five miles east of the 279 outerbelt around Columbus, Ohio. Most went whisking by taking video.

I was interested in playing with the new camera on the DJI Mavic 2 (bought in March of 2020) that was Auto Bracked for HDR photography. I was testing it out in low light conditions.Trying to capture a special time of evening called by phtographers the “magic hour” that early time of morning and late time of evening before night. A full moon hovering (watchful) over everything. Our little village in the country aseemed more isolated than ever in these days when everyone was isolated from everyone else.

People keep inside more. The lights are always on at night during this dark period of the world’s history. Masks are worn everywhere. A difficult time. Yet slightly above some homes or our villate, there is a blue sky and full moon in the sky and tonight and I somehow have the feeling things are going to end up well for the world. This was te feeling I was trying to capture at this time with my new drone. I searched for the right streets to shoot up for a shot on a full moon.

I had been an amateur photographer for years. More than anything else, I was trying to push HDR photography into new creative areas. I continued to search for the best HDR scenes and aught a number on a Sony A6400 and RX VII. One photo that really inspired the drone photo above. It is by famous master photograper I admired so much: Ansel Adams.

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1941) – Ansel Adams

Taken by Ansel Adams late in the afternoon on November 1, 1941. From a shoulder of Highway US 84/US 285  late in the afternoon on November 1, 1941,  in the unincorporated community of Hernandez, New Mexico. The photograph shows the Moon rising in a dominating black sky with low clouds 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 sunset lighting the white crosses and buildings. Because Adams did not date the image, attempts have been made to determine a date from astronomical in the photograph. It is one of Adams’ most popular works.

Context of the photo. In October 1941, US Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes hired Adams for six months to create photographs of lands under the jurisdiction of the Departmet of 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 road trip around the west. They came upon the scene while traveling through the Chama River valley toward Espafiola valley toward in late afternoon on November 1.

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.

Adams’ later accounts were more dramatic. In his autobiography, completed by his assistant and editor Mary Alinder shortly after his 1984 death, the traveling companions encountered a “fantastic scene”, a church and cemetery near Hernandez, New Mexico,  and pulled to the side of the road. Adams recalled that he yelled at his son Michael and at Wright to “Get this! Get that, for God’s sake! We don’t have much time!”Desperate to capture the image in the fading light, they scrambled to set up the tripod and camera, knowing that only moments remained before the light was gone.

As Adams noted in his book, “I could not find my Weston exposure meter! The situation was desperate: the low sun was trailing the edge of clouds in the west, and shadow would soon dim the white crosses … I suddenly realized that I knew the luminance of the Moon – 250 cd/ft squared. Using the Exposure Formula, I placed this value on Zone VII … Realizing as I released the shutter that I had an unusual photograph which deserved a duplicate negative, I quickly reversed the film holder, but as I pulled the darkslide, the sunlight passed from the white crosses; I was a few seconds too late! The lone negative suddenly became precious.”