Ansel Adams is best known as the master of black and white landscape photography, but this Kodachrome color photo is a rare exception. It depicts a worker surveying a Los Angeles-area Shell oil field. Adams took this photo for the 1945 "Pacific Coast" issue of Fortune, which featured the work of artists and photographers native to the West Coast.
In their introduction to Fortune's ninth single-subject issue in its history, the editors called Adams "an eminent technician, teacher, and writer, whose love of mountaineering has made him a foremost photographic interpreter of the West."
NEXT: Jesse E. Hartman, 1946