Fresno Trip - Stage 2 Yosemite - Part 2

The next morning we started off where we ended the previous day - in the meadow facing Yosemite Falls.  Once again, the dim light from nautical sunrise proved to be very frustrating in the valley and my early efforts amounted to nothing.  But once the civil sunrise started, things became better for image making under the glow of the coming dawn.

However, compared to the previous day, it was much colder and frost started forming on the ground.  And while we couldn’t feel it much in the valley, it was clear that the winds were robust near the top of the valley where they were playing havoc with the waterfall.  

After a few images I decided to cross the street and explore a grouping of rock and trees that I noted the previous day.  As I was walking towards the location I thought I wanted to be at, I glanced over and wondered why I hadn’t noticed this smaller dark rock in front of the rock I had intended to frame the photograph around.  As I set my tripod down, it dawned on me why I hadn’t remembered the rock from yesterday.  The rock was moving!  

I quickly dropped my backpack, turned on my camera and, following the photojournalist adage “f8 and be there”, I focused on the moving rock and waited . . . it lifted its head to look up for a second and . . .

I waited and waited, but as it grazed its way off to my right it didn’t lift its head again.  I guess I’m not much of a threat.  I also made some straight landscape shots, but nice as they are, there’s an element to this one that makes it special.  

I eventually made my way back across the road and noticed that a mist was starting to form and that it helped add atmosphere to a tree stump that I’d been looking at the past couple of days, but had been unsure of how to photograph.

Finally sunrise really hit and I turned back to Yosemite falls, with the wind still doing its thing.

One of the things I like about this particular location (which Ann found) is that you can also see the middle and lower falls. Now if they could just take out the bridge on the right . . . .

It then became a waiting game. Ann and I have found out that there are odd periods of time - different for each location - where the light transitions from one general state to another, and that it’s extremely difficult to make photographs that can work with the sky and landscape in the same image. It’s kind of like driving that period at dusk where it’s both too bright and too dark to see well. Three minutes earlier you were seeing things just fine. In 5 more minutes you’ll see just fine again, but right now you couldn’t see an elephant in front of your car. So we had to wait as the sun started making its way down the valley wall.

That of course created its own problems of contrast, but I managed to work around it (thank you telephoto lens) to focus on what the sun was doing with Yosemite Falls.

After a while we’d had enough and were cold and hungry.  Ann was kind enough to let me run off to make some images on the way back to breakfast, but we didn’t delay long because we knew superb biscuits were awaiting us.

After breakfast we decided to drive up to Washburn Point for a relaxing drive.  Well, actually I had thought of driving all the way to Glacier Point but decided that if there were that many people at Washburn Point, Glacier Point would be a zoo, so we headed back, enjoying a slow drive back (pulled over several times to let the speedsters by).  I took only one photograph on that drive, and it was just before the tunnel that leads to Tunnel View (another place we knew the swarms would be).

What I enjoy so much about this view is that it shows how the Yosemite Valley turns back and forth, something that isn’t as obvious from Tunnel View even though it’s not that far down the road.  (Check out the Yosemite posts from last year if you’re wondering about the view I’m talking about.)  The sad part of this photograph though is the damaged trees you can see in brown.  Because of the fires from a few years ago and the long-running drought, trees are incredibly stressed and bark beetle infestations are ravaging the woods around Yosemite as they are throughout the Sierras.  

We of course stopped off at Tunnel View, it’s such a lovely view that you can’t not stop.  But because it was so crowded we didn’t stay long and, given the clear skies, and fairly flat lighting, definitely didn’t make any photographs.  So we continued onward enjoying the beauty of the valley and ended up where we started the day just as the light started to get interesting.

When you’re photographing light in a way that you haven’t before, you (or at least I) tend to make a lot of similar images with subtle differences so I can learn about what the light is doing and, hopefully, why.  That leads to a bunch of similar looking images that can look repetitive to others, so I won’t bore you with a slide show that would probably make you decide you don’t need your sleeping pill tonight.  

What also happens when I do that is that at some point I have to radically change, at least for a bit, to clear my mind and to keep my self from simply repeating myself and mindlessly clicking away.  Fortunately, since this was Yosemite, all I had to do was turn around and walk across the street.

By then, the clouds had rolled in, which made for much more interesting skies.

Same rock, but no deer this time.  Oh yeah, and I included the bigger rock up above too.  But it wasn’t too long before I resumed what I wanted to work on that afternoon - shooting into the sun as it went down.

I think we made the right choice about how to end our Yosemite stay.