Professor Butter Beard and Ansel Adams’ “The Face of Half Dome”
“To see in color is a delight for the eye, but to see in black and white is a delight for the soul.” – Andri Cauldwell, contemporary American photographer
I prefer black and white. There, I said it. My photography students still give me their smirkiest smile every time they hear that statement in class. But for me, there is a depth, an understanding, and an underlying warmth from the soul in each black and white photograph. The artist appreciates the texture and the light and asks you to look deeper into the story before your brain accepts and translates the image into a recognizable memory. The artists asks you to see.
It has been a grey weekend. Nellie looks out the window into the black and white landscape being washed clean in a winter morning rainstorm, shakes her full body, and slowly makes her way back onto my lap, nudging my book out of eyesight, so my full concentration lands on her alone. I promise her some bacon and eggs, take another sip of my coffee and return to my journey through Yosemite Valley with my photographic mentor, Ansel Easton Adams.
Adams wrote, “Two months before the National Park Service was established (in 1916), I made my first trip to Yosemite Valley. I was fourteen. Not a year has passed since then that I have not in some way touched the substance of the wilderness and gained from its spirit.” He was always very public in his belief that the national parks should be protected and maintained as sacred spaces for communing with nature – physically, spiritually, and aesthetically.
“If you were to give me the pleasure of showing you Yosemite Valley for the first time,” he wrote, “I know just how I would want to do it. I would take you by night from the San Joaquin Valley up through the forested mountains and out to the Valley’s rim, so that when sunrise came, you would be standing on Glacier Point. Up before dawn, you would lean against the railing, trying to see down into the shadows for the first sight of something whose descriptions you never quite believed.”
In 1927, Adams began working with Albert M. Bender, a San Francisco insurance magnate and arts patron. Bender helped Adams produce his first portfolio in his new style, “Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras,” which included his famous image “Monolith, the Face of Half Dome,” which was taken with his Korona view camera, using glass plates and a dark red filter (used to heighten the tonal contrasts).
On that excursion, he supposedly had only one plate left, and he “internally visualized” the effect of the blackened sky before risking the last image. He later wrote, “I had been able to realize a desired image: not the way the subject appeared in reality but how it felt to me and how it must appear in the finished print.” Adams's concept of “visualization,” which he first defined in print in 1934, became the core principle in his photographic style.
I hear his soul speak within his photographs, and then I read his words: “You suddenly become aware of a growing chorus of chirps and squeaks and scuffling as birds and squirrels begin to stir in the nearby trees. And soon afterward you see the first kindling of light on the summit crags of Mount Hoffman, far to the north across the canyon. Gradually the golden light reaches farther down the slopes, moving slowly over cliff and forest, firing every rock and tree into green-golden flame. Soon the shadows in which we stand will be swept away as the sun burst upon us with an atomic blaze over the helmet curve of Half Dome.” All this is perfectly communicated in black and white.
Nellie shifts as a subtle reminder that I did mention “bacon.” As the oven heats to a hot 400 degrees, I do lay out the fat strips of bacon on wire racks to roast, but also whip together a batch of Mexican Chocolate Muffins, imitating the Latin American chocolate by adding cinnamon, espresso and a subtle pinch of toasted red chilis to the dark cocoa batter. As they rise in the intense heat to high cragged peaks within their white parchment cloaks, I realize I have recreated Yosemite’s Half Dome as “seen” by Ansel Adams in the warmth of black and white.
Mexican Spiced Chocolate Muffins
Two Dozen Muffins
5 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup dark cocoa
3 Tbsp baking powder
1 ½ cups granulated sugar
1 ½ tsp fine sea salt
2 Tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp chili powder
1 lb. unsalted butter (4 sticks), chilled
3 large eggs
2 cups whole milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla paste
2 Tbsp instant espresso powder, hydrated in 1 Tbsp hot water
3 cups dark chocolate chips
Coarse sugar to sprinkle on top of the muffins before baking
1) Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2) Line two muffins pans with parchment squares or muffin papers. In a small bowl, dissolve the espresso powder in the hot water.
3) In a very large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, granulated sugar, fine sea salt, cinnamon and chili powder.
4) In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, whole milk, vegetable oil, vanilla and the hydrated espresso.
5) Using a box grater, grate the butter over the dry mix. Use your fingers, or a pastry cutter, to evenly mix the dry and butter, breaking up any large clumps. Add the chocolate chips and then pour in the wet mix.
6) Using a spatula or plastic bowl scraper, fold the ingredients together just until no streaks of dry remain. Portion the batter into the prepared muffin pans, slightly mounding the batter into each paper. Sprinkle with the coarse sugar and bake one tray at a time for roughly 20 minutes, rotating the pan after 12 minutes, until the muffin feels firm to the touch. Allow the muffins to cool in the pan for 15-20 minutes before serving (the chocolate will be very hot!)
