Third Night

I always wanted a landscape with a black sky.

Like the famous Ansel Adams photograph, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. Like the landscapes of one of my favorite contemporary Dutch photographers, Awoiska van der Molen.

I’ve tried for years.

The usual way to get a really dark sky is to shoot with your back to the sunset, the exact opposite direction from where everyone else points their camera. But this photograph was an exception.

Summer 2017 was a particularly bad year for wildfire smoke.

One evening that August, I was high in the foothills watching the sun pierce the smoky atmosphere. I photographed the scene and processed the film.

I had underexposed the negative.

I tried again the next night.

And again on the third.

The third produced this photograph.

I knew as I smelled the smoke and cooked in the August heat that I had gotten it.

I’m proud of the negative. It prints exactly as expected, without a fuss.

Printed large and wrapped in a black frame, the photograph is especially striking. Calming and mysterious.

I always wanted a landscape with a black sky.