Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico

[2] The photograph shows the Moon rising in a dominating black sky with low clouds above a collection of modest dwellings, a church and a cross-filled graveyard, with snow-covered mountains in the background.

They came upon the scene while traveling through the Chama River valley toward Española in late afternoon on November 1 (see section "Dating", below); accounts of what transpired differ considerably.

Twilight photography is unfortunately neglected; what may be drab and uninteresting by daylight may assume a magnificent quality in the halflight between sunset and dark.Adams' later accounts were more dramatic.

In his autobiography, completed by his assistant and editor Mary Alinder shortly after his 1984 death, the traveling companions encountered a "fantastic scene", a church and cemetery near Hernandez, New Mexico, and pulled to the side of the road.

Realizing as I released the shutter that I had an unusual photograph which deserved a duplicate negative, I quickly reversed the film holder, but as I pulled the darkslide, the sunlight passed from the white crosses; I was a few seconds too late!

[8] Newhall wondered if the astronomical information in the photograph could provide the answer, so he approached David Elmore of the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder, Colorado.

He was intrigued by the discrepancy, and after working intermittently over the next ten years, including a visit to the location, concluded in 1991 "that Adams had been at the edge of the old roadbed, about 50 feet (20 m) west of the spot on the modern highway that Elmore had identified".

[citation needed] Art historian H. W. Janson called the photograph "a perfect marriage of straight and pure photography".

[18] Peter Bunnell's print of Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico was the highest priced photograph of the April 2023 Phillips Photography auction for an above-estimate $381,000.