The Master's Vision

Royal Arches Behind the Ahwahnee Hotel

01/17/10

(photo taken with Lydia's iPhone)

I remember a time in the early 1980s when my family visited Yosemite Valley. We happened upon a group of folks huddled around an older man with a white beard, a really cool hat and a commanding presence. They all had eager Nikons hanging around their necks and listened intently to the man who was speaking softly and occasionally pointing to the rims of the granite cliffs which loomed above. He had a knowing smile.

"Hey!" my mother whispered. "It's Ansel Adams! He must be giving a photography seminar." My brother Joe promptly whipped out his camera and snapped a photo:

(Not the actual picture Joe took. The actual picture is buried somewhere in the catacombs of photographic storage areas, the shoeboxes and yellowing albums which may be lost forever in the crawl spaces of my parent's attic.)

A few years later, Ansel Adams would die, leaving a legacy of stunning photographs which speak to that which I cannot articulate, which throw me into euphoric emotional upheaval, and which leave me speechless, whole and emptied of all that wrestles for my attention. When I study his photographs I often find myself repeating the words of my brother, Joe: "Wow! That is some serious granite crackage."

And now Sammy says that if this professional poker aspiration doesn't work out, he can just be Ansel Adams. I tell him, though, that there was already an Ansel Adams. So Sammy answers, "Fine, I'll just be a photographer who takes pictures as beautifully as Ansel Adams did. Ok?"