Melting Snow & Ice / Aspen Colorado Winter 1981

Charles G. Henningsen

A platinum print, a photograph, of a snowy mountainside in Aspen, Colorado. Photographer Chuck Henningsen did this in 1981, looking from another mountain into the valley below. There is no evidence of any human activity, just quiet abstraction, created by nature and captured by film.

In the mid-1970s Hennigsen met and studied with photographer Ansel Adams and, because of his financial situation (an early engineer with Hewlett-Packard) he was able to establish his lab to print platinum prints, which he did on occasion for Adams.

After a business partner's death, Chuck Henningsen and his remaining partner decided to sell the electronics business they had started after leaving H-P. It was the 1980s and Henningsen walked away a very happy man. "We were just luckier than hell," he says. "We got away with more money than we should have."

From that point, Henningsen was hooked on photography. Under Adams's tutelage, he quickly developed a professional's eye for the highest quality of the image that was then possible.

Henningsen moved to Taos, New Mexico where he built a specially designed lab/studio/gallery. Again, because of his unique financial situation, Henningsen was able to equip his photo lab with the best equipment and materials and he became an expert in printing platinum prints, which he did both for himself and working with other photographers to print using the platinum method.