----- Original Message -----
From: "Jack Davis"
Subject: Re: AA bis
The "preparation" was applied while spending endless hours in the
darkroom agonizing over printing "Hernandez" the way He saw it.
Hard to believe the time He spent printing that particular image.
Purportedly, His most sought after. In fact, one of His books
identified it as the main reasons He finally decided to stop providing
personally done prints.
Much of that preparation was also knowing his film, equipment and light. I
recall reading one of AAs descriptions of the scene. He had no meter
available, but he knew the required exposure (more or less), because he knew
what the luminance of the moon was.
The negative was, apparently, somewhat underexposed.
I saw an original Moonrise, signed by St. Ansel in a gallery in Santa Fe
some years ago. He hadn't quite secured the depth of field required, and if
you look carefully, you can see the crosses in the graveyard are slighly
soft.
They wanted $15,000 for the print, and had I been able to afford it, I would
have bought it. It was a lovely photograph.
Being able to hold an original AA print in my hands was quite a nice
experience as well.
William Robb
