Why is the photographic work When the Moon Rises so popular?

When the Moon Rises is Adams' most popular work. The work originated from an unexpected discovery during a trip. At that time, Adams was driving south along the highway. When he was about to arrive in Hernandez village, he saw a strange sight: the moon was rising in the east, hanging on the distant clouds and snow-covered peaks, and the sunset in the west, half hidden and half exposed on a row of clouds flowing south, projected shining white light on the cross of the church cemetery.

Adams described the process of taking this photo in his memoirs: I drove the station wagon to the side of the road, jumped out of the car and quickly grabbed the photographic equipment. The camera is installed, and the field of view and focal length are good, but the exposure meter is not found. The sunset behind me is about to sink into the clouds. It suddenly occurred to me that the brightness of the moon is 250 candles per square foot, so I put this value in the seventh area of the exposure scale, and used Leiden's 15 dark yellow filter to set the exposure time at one second f/32. As for the value of the foreground shadow, there is no way to accurately grasp it. After taking the first photo, I quickly turned over the 8× 10 inch film box and took another one, because I vaguely knew that I had taken a very important photo, but that important photo was the most prone to accidents or damage. At the moment of shooting, the sun has deviated from the cross of the cemetery, and that magical moment is gone forever.

After pressing the shutter, Adams knew it would be a very special photo. But he didn't expect it to be so popular and lasted for decades. "When the Moon Rises" became his most famous photo, and he received countless letters for this photo.

Adams once said that When the Moon Rises was never made with double exposure. Adams didn't clearly record the time when the photo was taken, which led to the statements of 194 1, 1942, 1943 and 1944, which made biographers and historians at a loss. Finally found the correct date, astronomer David? Dr. Aylmer used the geological exploration map to find out the height and orientation, and then entered the results into the computer together with a major structural map rising in Zhang Yueliang. The computer's drawing software runs minute by minute in possible years, and finally it is found that the moon angle at a certain time is exactly the same as that in the photo. The computer calculated that "When the Moon Rises" was shot between 194 1 year 1 March 3 1 4: 05 pm.