The reading passage is about a set of photographic negatives that are believed to belong to Ansel Adams. However, the professor presents some alternative information that casts doubt on the negatives belonging to the famous photographer.

Both the passage and lecturer deals with the photographic negatives. Whilst the author thinks that envelope containing photographic negatives are the work of Ansel Adam for three specific reasons, the lecturer opposes the authors claims. In his opinion, negatives in the envelope might not be Adams work for three reasons. First, the writer claims that photographic negative of pine trees is seen in many of the Adams photographs thus author believes that the pine tree photograph in the envelope is the work of Adam's. In contrast, the lecturer argues that negative of pine tress are famous and many photographer has clicked the pine tree negative. Hence there is no guarantee that it was clicked by Adam. Second, the author mentions that address on the envelope was written by Adams wife because handwriting matches with her's. This made the author believe that Adam has crated the negative and it was managed by his wife. However, the lecturer call this argument into question by saying that there are many misspelling words in the address which is unlikely as Virginia Adam is well educated to not to make such minor mistakes. Finally, the writer asserts that some of the negative have fire damage and for a fact author knows that Adam's studio has caught on fire in the past. As opposed to the author, the lectures highlights that many of negatives were made by highly flammable materials which in turn might have caused few of the negatives to be burned. At the end, lecturer stated that evidence is not conclusive enough to declare that negatives in the envelope are Adam's work.