Old is Gold
Adam’s Struggle
“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
How very true it is, isn’t it? Photographers do not just
capture the shot, they make it what it is. They give a
reality to it, a meaning, a perspective to it. For them every
photograph is a new story, a new way to look into life,
because photographs are not just meant to look at, but,
to look into. These very wise words were uttered by Ansel
Adams who lived each of his clicks.
Ansel Easton Adams was an American Photographer
who captured landscapes. Apart from this, he was an
environmentalist and considered himself very close to
nature and its mysteries. His photos are reflective of
the fact of how much of a nature lover he was. Adams
could go to any length to make his photos look realistic
and make them speak to all humankind. Today we look
over again at one of his greatest works and my personal
favourites-Monolith, the face of the half dome.
The story behind this picture is extremely fascinating.
Adams did not consider himself to be a photographer but
a musician as he was an extremely skilled pianist. Soon he
realised that this would only bring him local fame and that
photography interested him more than anything else. He
had a special connection to the Yosemite Valley situated in
Sierra Nevada. This was because when he was just a kid of
14, he had gone there with his parents during vacation and
had captured his first significant shot of the Half Dome on
his Kodak Brownie and that is when he had realised that
photography was something that really fascinated him and
he wanted all his contemporaries to explore the magic that
lay in these stills.
“Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter pf
green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and
space.” This is what Yosemite Valley was to Adams. One
fine day he decided that he wanted a perfect shot of the
Monolith and go back to those good old days of him as a
kid and relive those beautiful memories. The day was April
10, 1927 and a 25-year-old Adams along with his fiancée
and two other friends was ascending up the Yosemite’s Le
Conte gully trail. To reach the Monolith was a Herculean
task as there was a disparity of 5000 feet between him
and his destination. The conquest was not easy as he had
a 40 pound 6 ½ * 8 ½ Korona view camera with 2 lenses,
2 filters, a wooden tripod and 12 glass plates that would
act as his negatives. But this was not going to dilute his
enthusiasm.
While on his way he clicked many pictures to the limit that
when he reached his destination he had only 2 plates left
to use. Adams had already visualised a picture in his head
and he was not going to settle for anything less than that.
He had an emotional connect with this picture and
48 CLASSICS
Monolith-Face of Half Dome by Ansel Adams
he wanted it to be the best. He tried the 11th exposure
with a yellow filter but the effect of the sun and the
shadow at the same time was not good enough. This was
his last chance. It was the last plate he had and this one
had to work otherwise all his hard work would have gone
in vain. He tried the red filter which was much darker and
that gave him the quality he had wanted in the picture. It
had worked. He had the perfect picture.
This picture is extremely important as it established
Adams as a successful photographer and also because it
preserves the national heritage of the park. It represents
Adams’ very first conscious visualisation which would
become very important in the coming years.
Taken on a symbolic level, this picture talks about the idea
of choice. The snow representing all that is good and calm
while the darkness of the half dome stands as a metaphor
for the darkness of evil and that of ignorance. By the idea
of this picture Adams has laid down two clear cut options
before us and has left us to choose what we like while still
appreciating the beauty of the other option because it is
neither easy to walk the good path nor is it difficult to walk
the worse one.
Saman Waheed
[email protected]
She is like all writers, loves writing about each and everything under the sun.
An indoor person , she loves to sit back and just travel to another world, lost
in her thoughts. She loves the company of books as they take her to places
she has never been. She loves to cook and makes good desserts.