El Capitan (Winter), Special Edition Photograph

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According to Ansel, ‘getting up at dawn on a winter morning and driving around Yosemite in search of photographs is a chilly but wonderful experience.’ (E pg. 45)  Ansel Adams made this image before 1950 with an 8" x 10" view camera, but the precise date is unknown. The looming darkness of the granite face contrasts dramatically with the brightness of the snow-clad trees on either side of the Merced River enveloping the great mountain in intense luminosity.  Other photographs of this subject by Ansel frequently have a reversed tonality, with dark trees and shadows at the extremes of the day framing the brighter rock face in the distance.  Here, there seems to be light everywhere focusing our attention on the dark mass of the monolith.  By setting up his camera at a perspective above the river, Ansel does mitigate optical compression, letting the water act as a boundary between us and the scene, its sinuous path tying the composition together. During his career, Ansel took many images of El Capitan's dramatic face, notably one of his first known photographs taken in 1916 on his first trip to Yosemite. Using a Kodak #1 Box Brownie, he offered an early hint at the visualization that would later become his hallmark. After that early photograph, Ansel Adams returned to El Capitan over and again photographing it in every time, season, and light he could.  Virgina and Ansel Adams would later include this image in the Special Edition of Yosemite series signifying its importance among the artist’s collective works.