Lot 16 D

The iconic photo of a young aspen tree in the glistening sunlight against a dark background was taken on a beautiful autumn afternoon near the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, in the southern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. On this afternoon, it was so calm that the leaves did not move and Adams managed a negative without any motion blur. But he was not satisfied with just making a crisp negative that would be easy to work with later in the darkroom. He was rather concerned with capturing the colour impression of the autumn forest in the sun during the photo session in order to be able to transform it into black-and-white photography later. To this end he made use of the 'zone system', a method still used today, which Adams had developed in 1939-41 together with Fred R. Archer and which he later elaborated and expanded theoretically in numerous publications and papers. This method allows the photographer to accurately calculate the exposure and development of the negative and thus determine the silver density and grey tone values of the subsequent print in advance through precise planning. The tonal values are divided into 10 grey shades - from black to white.
Adams described the process for the present motif as follows: 'I placed the deepest shadows on Zone II and indicated Normal-plus-two development time. I selected pyro as the approriate developer for this subject, because I knew it would give high acutance to the glittering autumn leaves. I knew I must use a higher-than normal paper contrast for printing, since the hightes values of the leaves fell on about Zones VI-VI ½. As I recall, the exposure, with the No.15 filter (factor of 3) was one second at f/32 on Kodak Panatomic-X-film at ASA 32. With no wind this relatively long exposure was possible; had the aspen leaves bee quaking I would have had a severe problem.' (as quoted by Andrea G. Stillman, loc.cit., p. 202)
Despite all the scientific accuracy and obsession for the technical side of photography expressed in this quote, it is important to note that Adams had visualised the completed work in every nuance before he operated the shutter. So he was not only a master of camera technology and the darkroom, but also a master of sentience. The congruence between his ‚vision' - that of a slender tree in the last flicker of the golden autumn sun - and its transformation into black-and-white photography is unique, the result a true masterpiece of landscape photography.