Third Night

I always wanted a landscape with a black sky. Like the famous Ansel Adams photograph, Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico. Like one of my favorite contemporary Dutch photographers, Awoiska van der Molen’s landscapes. I’ve tried for years. The only way to get a really dark sky is to shoot with your back to the sunset, the exact opposite way everyone else shoots. But this photo with a dark sky was an exception to that rule.

Summer 2017 was a particularly bad year for wildfire smoke. I was high up in the foothills one evening that summer watching the sun pierce the smoky atmosphere. I photographed and processed the film. I had underexposed the negative. I tried again the next night, and again on a third.  The third produced this photograph. I knew as I smelled the smoke and cooked in the heat of August that I had gotten it. I’m proud of the negative, it prints exactly as expected, without a fuss.

In a large size, wrapped in a black frame, this photograph is especially striking. It’s calming and mysterious. 

I always wanted a landscape with a black sky.