Rondal Partridge apprenticed himself to Ansel Adams as a teenager, lugging the master photographer's heavy equipment up and down Yosemite's majestic peaks.
He also was fired on several occasions, including the time he tied Adams' shoelaces together and made him fall on his face.
Such irreverence became a hallmark of Partridge's work.
Like Adams, Partridge photographed many of the West's natural wonders. But unlike his mentor, he worked to show humanity's encroachments — power lines marring a vista, tire tracks crisscrossing a pristine beach and parked cars clogging the foot of Yosemite's grand Half Dome.
Adams "always jumped over the fence … walked past the garbage.