“He does mention some experiments by moonlight, not even specifying that they were photographic. During one, he and his factotum, Jim, waited for two hours with the temperature at 32 ° before they finally took down the camera and tripod and rowed, half-frozen, back to the Maid. Emerson says merely, “The experiment was a failure.” But the second plate in On English Lagoons, “The Moonlit River,” is unmistakably “by actual moon-light.” Bright as it is, it has that strange luminosity never found in so-called “moonlight” scenes which are merely underexposures by daylight printed dark.” ⎯Nancy Newhall, 1975 (1.)

The lone plate printed in cyan-colored ink in On English Lagoons is reproduced in Chapter VI:

“The moon arose silently growing like a flower in the night, a silver grey ball slowly flushing to a golden tinge. Higher and higher rose the grey sea, so that only the vane of a passing wherry was visible as we glided past each other on the hidden river.”  (p. 22)

1. Excerpt: Nancy Newhall, P.H. Emerson: The Fight for Photography as a Fine Art, An Aperture Monograph, N.Y., 1975, p. 92