Records have continued to be broken steadily. But until last year, when a contemporary photograph by Richard Prince sold for $1.2 million at Christie’s, no single print had ever broken the six-figure barrier at auction. So when Sotheby’s announced this week that “The Pond ˜ Moonlight,” a platinum print by Edward Steichen owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, had sold for almost $3 million to an anonymous buyer, it was as if continents had shifted in the photography world.
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Two Hikers. Mission Peak. January 28, 2006. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell.
The light was amazing as I topped out on the ridge to the southeast of Mission Peak last Sunday – fog was streaming across the newly green grass on the ridge. Just as I arrived two hikers passed by and it occurred to me that they might make a subject for a photo.
I thought I had the wrong lens on the camera and considered swapping it out for a telephoto, but there was no time as the hikers started across to the other side of the ridge and the light changed rapidly – so I grabbed the tripod and mounted the camera with the 17-40 zoom. I didn’t have time to fully secure the tripod so I sort of half hand held the camera on top of the tripod and clicked off a half dozen shots as they started to descend.
It wasn’t until this evening that I finally looked closely at these images, only to find that this one in particular has a simple, spare quality that I like. I’m not done with it yet – it might even end up as a monochrome image.
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