Following Ansel Adams — In Infrared: Skip Montello’s New Show at the Rockport Art Association
Skip Montello spent nearly 40 years as a photographic scientist and technology leader at Polaroid — and it’s that career, now that he’s retired, that shaped the photography hobby he’s pursued ever since, chasing seascapes, landscapes, and the kind of light that only shows up if you’re willing to get up before sunrise. This month, that lifelong passion takes center stage in a show of its own. “A Tribute to Ansel Adams,” Montello’s solo exhibition, opens at the Rockport Art Association and Museum’s Martha Moore Room and runs September 5–24, 2026.
The premise is simple to state and took Montello six years to actually pull off: travel to the same national park locations Ansel Adams made famous, stand where Adams stood, and photograph the same scenes — but shoot them entirely in digital infrared monochrome. The result is a body of work that’s part homage, part technical experiment, and part very personal story about a photographer who once had the chance to meet the man himself.
A Front-Row Seat to a Legend
Montello’s connection to Adams isn’t secondhand. Back in his Polaroid days, Adams was one of the company’s “use testers” — working photographers Polaroid relied on to push its film to its limits — and Montello got to meet him in person, a few years before Adams passed away in 1984.
“It was very inspiring in the black and white field mainly,” Montello said of the encounter. “And since then, I’ve always had a close affirmation to using black and white. And later I’ve gone to infrared monochrome.”
Montello remembers Adams as someone whose devotion to the craft never wavered, even late in life. Adams would travel across the American West to the national parks with a Hasselblad (500C) or Graflex (Speed Graphic), using Polaroid’s peel-apart black and white film to preview his compositions before committing to his final shots. It let him see, in real time, whether a scene was actually working.
There was just one problem: Adams thought Polaroid’s 60-second development time was too slow. “The clouds are changing, the light’s changing,” he told Polaroid’s scientists — and Montello remembers the whole room nodding in recognition. Polaroid’s engineers ended up building him a special film that developed in around 35 seconds. “It wasn’t really, really good,” Montello said, “but for his use, it was good enough for what he wanted” — good enough to judge a composition, even if it wasn’t the final image quality Adams was actually shooting.
Retracing the Steps, Six Years and Three Parks Later
For his own tribute, Montello didn’t just photograph in Adams’ style — he went to Adams’ specific spots. Drawing on his own knowledge and research, Montello set out to find and re-shoot the exact locations Adams had made iconic decades earlier, this time using modern infrared technology instead of black and white film.
The project stretched across three national parks and six years: Glacier National Park (Montana) in 2020, Yosemite National Park (California) in 2023, and Grand Teton National Park (Wyoming) in 2025. “Just something I needed to do. I’d wanted to do it for a while,” Montello said. When a solo show opportunity came up at the Rockport Art Association, the timing lined up. “He’s one of the famous photographers in the world. And so I did it.”
The Grand Teton image chosen to promote the show is a fitting centerpiece — it’s a view Adams himself returned to and photographed many times. “I can see why when I looked at it,” Montello said. He shot the same iconic vantage point from a few different angles within the park and picked the version that now represents the exhibit.
The Gear Behind the Look
Every image in the show was shot with a Sony A7 converted to 850-nanometer infrared by Kolari Vision. Most of the work was handheld, though Montello switched to a tripod in low light — infrared photography demands longer exposure times than standard full-spectrum shooting, since the camera is only capturing a single wavelength of light.
Montello timed his shots deliberately, heading out at first light or in the last light of day, both for the quality of the light and to avoid the crowds that pack the parks’ more famous overlooks. He often carried two cameras at once — one set up for infrared, one for standard color — and says the difference in impact wasn’t subtle. “I did shoot many of these same shots in color, and they don’t bounce at me like these do,” he said.
What to Look For
Walking into the Martha Moore Room, Montello hopes visitors slow down and really look. “The beauty of the images,” he said, when asked what he wants people to notice first. “Black and white in certain respects shows you a different look on photography versus with today everything is in color. Very few photographers that I know of really shoot a lot in black and white or infrared.” Look closely at the skies in particular — the infrared conversion gives them a crispness and contrast that color photography simply can’t replicate.
It’s a fitting tribute: a photographer who once stood beside Ansel Adams, decades later standing in his footsteps, using tools Adams never had access to in service of the same pursuit — finding the moment when the light, the land, and the composition all come together at once.
A Tribute to Ansel Adams — Skip Montello Solo Show. Rockport Art Association and Museum, Martha Moore Room 12 Main Street, Rockport, MA 01966 On view September 5–24, 2026 Gallery hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10am–5pm, Sunday 12pm–5pm, closed Monday (978) 546-6604 | rockportartassn.org