The curved pine tree sits on top of Sentinel Rock, one of many natural wonders hewn out of granite in Yosemite National Park. The intrepid climber perched on an overhanging cliff-top is, meanwhile, Ansel Hall, who served as the official park naturalist between 1920 and 1923. The trees and waterfalls look as majestic now as they did back then. Beyond these facts, there's very little about this collection of images that hasn't, at some point, been the subject of fierce dispute in a $200m legal battle between their current owner Rick Norsigian, and the estate of Ansel Adams – the "father" of US photography, whose black-and-white images of the American West are a highly lucrative staple of the greetings card and calendar industry.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ansel-adams-the-lost-negatives-and-a-200m-lawsuit-2244107.html