User:Cullen328/Sandbox/Hernandez

In 1941, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes hired Adams for six months to create photographs of lands under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior. Adams was accompanied by his young son Michael and his best fried Cedric Wright on a long road trip around the west. While traveling through the Chama River valley near nightfall on November 1, 1941, they encountered a "fantastic scene", a church and cemetery near Hernandez, New Mexico, and pulled to the side of the road. Adams recalled that he yelled at his son Michael and at Wright to "Get this! Get that, for God's sake! We don't have much time!" Desperate to capture the image in the fading light, they scrambled to set up the tripod and camera, knowing that only moments remained before the light was gone. The result was Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, a photograph that became so popular and collectible that Adams personally made over 1,300 photographic prints of it during his long career. On October 17, 2006, Sotheby’s auctioned a print of this photograph for $609,600. Art historian H. W. Janson called this photo "a perfect marriage of straight and pure photography".