Inspired By Ansel

Some photographs you make for yourself. This one I made for Ansel. Standing at the Snake River Overlook in Grand Teton National Park, I was walking in the footsteps of one of the most consequential landscape photographers in history — the view where he made his 1942 masterpiece, the image that taught generations of photographers what a mountain range could look like when rendered in silver.

The river has shifted since Adams set up his large format camera here, and the cottonwoods that once framed the bend have grown tall enough to change the composition. But the Tetons remain exactly as he saw them — that jagged silhouette rising abruptly from the valley floor, the dramatic relief of Grand Teton asserting itself against the sky, no foothills to soften the impact. I chose to work in black and white because this landscape doesn't need color. It has all the tonal range you could ask for — pure white snow in the couloirs, deep black in the shadowed rock, and every shade between in the layered forest below.

I composed vertically to emphasize the compression of the scene — the density of the evergreens in the foreground, the middle ground of valley floor catching residual light, then that wall of mountain demanding the top of the frame. Processing in monochrome let me push contrast the way Adams would have dodged and burned in his darkroom, bringing out the texture in the snow fields and the menace in the cloud banks above.

Inspired By Ansel is my quiet tribute to the photographer who first taught me that a landscape is more than a view — it's a statement about permanence, time, and our small place inside them.