Ansel Adams: "El Capitan, Winter"The Story Behind The Image

Ansel Adams, "El Capitan, Winter"
Yosemite Special Edition Photograph

"El Capitan, Winter" The Story Behind The Image
In Ansel Adams' "El Capitan, Winter," the looming darkness of the granite face contrasts dramatically with the brightness of the snow-clad trees on either side of the Merced River. Ansel Adams made this image before 1950 with an 8" x 10" view camera; the precise date is unknown.

Other photographs of this image have a reversed tonality, dark trees and shadows framing the brighter rock. On winter days, as the sun warms the frozen face of El Capitan, rocks often shower down from above as the ice holding them in place melts. After the thousand-foot fall explodes the rocks on impact filling the valley with booming echoes.

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, framing the pale granite face with leafy trees in the foreground to downplay the overwhelming size of El Capitan. After that early photograph, Ansel Adams returned to El Capitan over and again photographing it in every time, season, and light he could.


Explore more winter photographs made by Ansel Adams. <=== click this link but please feel free to ignore the $ signs.

Hmm .. I was right under the vertical part on a day like that. Most of the falling ice would hydroplane away from the face. Then the wind calmed, and a chunk about 60 ft across landed about 30 ft away. Time to get out of Dodge City. Watkins, Muybridge, and Fiske all did wonderful pale sky shots of El Cap by virtue of blue sensitive films. My sky was white due to snow conditions, like this one. That kind of treatment often renders a sense of scale and monumentality to the scene. There is a better known shot taken by AA from the same spot much later, which would make an interesting comparison. His careful timing with respect to the pattern of ascending vapors or fog is apparent in both. Few of his disciples had the same level of poetic timing. The Zone System can't teach you that!