Serpentine

Because the trees have grown up across that overlook in the eighty-odd years since Ansel Adams photographed it, the river he had running through his foreground is now almost entirely hidden. I got what I could by backing the truck in near the railing, setting the tripod up on top of the tonneau cover and shooting from as high as I could reach. There’s a curve of water in this frame that you cannot see standing on the ground at all, and I’m quietly pleased about that.

I first came across Adams in an art history class in college and his Teton and Yellowstone work has stayed with me since, though I hadn’t looked closely at that particular photograph for years when I made this one. In his version the river is the subject, tracing a clean line across the valley floor. In mine it’s a suggestion you have to go looking for.

What I will claim over him is the mountains. There was exactly the right amount of snow on them that morning — enough to pick out every contour and fold without burying the rock — and the park was almost empty, being at the very end of its season in November.

This one gave me more trouble at the desk than almost anything else I’ve made. Fully lit peaks, sidelit trees glowing a golden green the way they only do in winter, deep blue shadow in the foreground evergreens, cold bright water and a bank of dry golden grass — the dynamic range in it is enormous, and getting the colour back to what my eye saw took several complete restarts. I’ve re-edited it from scratch more times than I’d like to admit.

Same November trip as Pioneer Spirit and Frost Fringe, both from a few days either side of this one.