UPDATE: As of 2020 I am no longer posting annual updates concerning this subject — and I am editing older posts on the subject in light of the need to be more responsible about not encouraging the onslaught. I also no longer recommend going to the Valley to see it. Unfortunately, too much exposure (yes, I played a part in it, unfortunately) has led to absurd crowds, traffic jams, littering, destruction of areas in the Valley where too many people go to see it… and the park has increasingly — and appropriately — cracked down. Parking options have been eliminated, at least one viewing location has been closed. Good news! The rest of Yosemite Valley is still there and often exceptionally beautiful at this time of year.
I recall first becoming aware of Galen Rowell’s famous photograph of Yosemite’s Horsetail Fall (the “natural fire fall”) many years ago, quite possibly as it appears on page 25 of my 1979 edition of his book “High and Wild” ( Sierra Club Books) which I probably picked up when I worked in a bookstore for several years. (Each bookstore employee had a shelf in a back room where we put aside books until we could afford them. My shelf often held books of photography including large format books of landscape photography. I still have original copies of several of the well-known Ansel Adams books in new condition, but that is a story for another post perhaps.) I am sure that I saw the photograph again from time to time, and the story of its creation is now well known. Of course, I did not really know then where the fall was, other than “somewhere in Yosemite Valley,” nor did I know when the purportedly brief appearance of the fall occurred each year. It was a mystery, almost a myth, and it seemed like something that only a few privileged people had been able to see.
Although I’ve visited the Valley for decades — long enough that I remember watching the unnatural fire fall being pushed over the edge of Glacier Point when I was a child – I had never really tried to find Horsetail Fall, much less photograph it. Truth be told, some decades ago I actually avoided the Valley for a number of years, with the exception of a time when I did a bit of climbing, since I preferred the high country of the park and elsewhere in the Sierra to the crowds and traffic in the Valley.
A few years ago – and a bit before the current insane craze for photographing the thing – I read more about Horsetail and finally got the urge to photograph it. I think back to a February day when Northside Drive was closed for a period of major road work. It had snowed in the Valley and the only way to get over to the El Capitan picnic area was to park on Southside drive, load up a pack with camera gear, and walk the cross-valley road in the snow. Since it was my first attempt to photograph the fall, I walked across early. Having plenty of time, I turned west on Northside and wandered in a snow-covered El Capitan Meadow completely alone — no cars and, to the best of my memory, not another person. After spending perhaps an hour alone photographing the oak-filled meadow in the late afternoon, I walked back to the east and wandered up to the picnic area where a handful of other photographers were getting set up. I looked up and thought, “Oh, that’s Horsetail,” and then made some credible but fairly conventional photographs of the sight as the sunset light came on.
I returned to photograph Horsetail a few more times, on occasion making this the main goal of winter visits to the Valley. I explored the surroundings near the picnic area more thoroughly, and found more nearby areas to shoot from that created some variations in perspective. I joined the growing throng at a more accessible spot and there figured out that the fall could be photographed from more than precisely one location. Before I was done I created a few photographs of the subject that I like. (I don’t mean to imply that I was always successful. On one “memorable” evening I set up and watched as the sunset light began to glow and focus itself on the fall. It was just about to reach its peak… when someone hit the “off switch” and everything went gray as the setting sun dropped behind clouds far to the west.)
Over the past couple of years more and more people have shown up for Horsetail. It might seem odd that few others photographed it for so many decades after Rowell made his iconic image, and that then many suddenly began to try to do so. But a couple of things changed. First, the advent of digital photography and DSLRs has radically increased the number of photographers out and about and searching for things to photograph. There have long been many people with cameras in the Valley, but it sometimes has seemed to become a bit crazy in recent years. Secondly, and not entirely unrelated, the Internet has made it much easier to share information about such things as Horsetail and, even more so, to quickly update people on what is happening right now with certain photographic subjects. I think this has encouraged photographers whose time is limited and who want to “get that shot” as quickly as possible to be ready to drop everything and head out now if they hear that conditions will be promising.
And the crowds certainly do show up! A few years ago I drove to a viewing area area one February day — the road was open once again — to find a parking lot completely full and then some. Photographers were set up tripod-to-tripod and scattered in nearby forest and meadows. One evening I decided to try the other location again, and having caught on to what was happening I arrived quite early… to find that photographers were already staking out their spots hours ahead of time. I found a spot up a hill a ways in some trees, and waited… as scores of photographers began to show up and point their lenses in the same direction.
Unfortunately, the problem has continued to spiral out of control, with newspaper and magazine articles and breathless social media posts amping the thing up beyond all reason… and beyond the park’s ability to withstand the onslaught. In places where a dozen or two folks used to show up on a busy night, the crowds doubled, then doubled again, then reached into the hundreds and now into the thousands. Traffic jams ensued, huge crowds assembled in fragile meadows, forests, and river bank areas, trampling down vegetation and soil and leaving litter behind. The park service had no choice but to (wisely) institute restrictions, and as of 2020 access has been made much more difficult and limited and one of the two popular areas has been closed entirely.
That lovely, mythical, magical experience of a decade or more ago no longer exists. I urge readers to forego this one. The Valley is still utterly beautiful at this time of year, but go elsewhere and photograph its other wonderful features. Don’t be part of the out of control horde…
Photographically, the subject has become less and less appealing to me. I’ll photograph an “icon” in more or less a couple circumstances. First, I’ll do it if I don’t already have a decent image of the icon in question. Once I have an effective image I’ll often stay away unless there is something extra special about the conditions or unless I can find a new or different perspective on the subject or unless I’m working to refine a way of photographing it that I have worked on previously. It is hard, I think, to attempt this with Horsetail. The number of locations from which it is photographed is rather limited. Most photographs are made more or less from two basic locations, with slight variations. And while weather conditions can vary a lot in the Valley, the range of conditions that will still permit the sunset light to hit the fall and be photographed is very limited.
In the end, even very good photographs of the fall tend to look quite a bit like other very good photographs of the fall, mostly varying only a bit. Although I’ve recently seen many competent and well-made photographs of the fall… I’ve only seen one that was truly original. (I’m not going to identify it here since if I don’t want to encourage the next crowd to start coming out to try to recreate that image! :-)
So, I didn’t go this year. I was in Death Valley at about the time that the light started, and I spent time doing night photography on a later weekend when I might have gone.
I think I prefer to remember that evening a few years ago when I walked across the Valley in snow, spent an hour alone in El Capitan Meadow before walking to the picnic area, photographed Horsetail in the quiet with a small number of other photographers, and then walked back across the Valley in the peaceful darkness of the early evening.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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I want to capture my memory,do not really care about others memories, just mine. Could care less about how many others have done it or are there, they can’t get my memory for the moment.
Michael:
Thanks for writing and sharing your viewpoint and (considerable) experience with this issue. Photographing in Yosemite as you do so often, this has to be something that you think about even more that most of us. I would have replied a bit soon, but I wanted to take a little more time with my reply to you since you raise so many interesting and important issues.
Like you, I think that Horsetail is one of those subjects that you photograph and then are more or less done with. (Not completely done, perhaps – I still would photograph it if I thought that some very special conditions were available or perhaps with a friend who had never seen it before.) But it is a different sort of subject than, for example, eastern Sierra aspen groves, Mono Lake, the high country near the Sierra Crest, and even many subjects in the Valley. Those subjects are rarely the same twice, and can be transformed tremendously by weather and light and seasons and all the rest of it. There are places I return to every single year in the high country – and I have been going back to some of them for literally decades – yet I still find something new (often shockingly new) almost every time I go.
But, at least in photographic terms, Horsetail seems unlikely to offer that sort of reward. Because “interesting” weather conditions are quite likely to interfere with the sunset light or the ability to see the fall, the major variations are probably cropping, camera position (with only a few significant variables), subtle variations in amount or color of light, amount of water flowing in the fall, spray from wind, and perhaps some overhead thin clouds. While it is possible that something interesting and different can come from those things, compared to the variations we have with many other subjects (time of day, weather conditions, seasonal variations, shooting location, what is included in foreground or background, and much more) this is a pretty small playing field.
And there is the transition from the barely known marvel of a few decades ago, seen only in a few great photographs, to something that now exists as thousands and thousands of images that begin to look very similar to one another – much more similar than, say, photographs made even from other iconic locations such as tunnel view. (I have to say that I think this applies to my own photographs of the subject. Of the three I posted, the second one no longer quite thrills me, though I like the light on the water. I like the print of the third one, but it doesn’t seem substantially different from others I’ve seen from the same location. There are some reasons why I think that the black and white version might be the best of the bunch, but I’ll resist analysis right now, except to say that I think it still holds some mystery.)
And those of us who like to think we are searching out something different and reflective of our own experience and point of view in this landscape are, I think, uncomfortable to varying degrees when we find ourselves standing in a crowd of scores of other photographers pointing their lenses at the very same small target on the cliff above…. hoping that we get lucky… along with the other scores of photographers. Like you, “I don’t get it” either. :-)
But, as I tried to suggest in my piece, and as you speak about in the last paragraph of your reply, there is something compelling and amazing (and I truly mean this) about the thing itself. I wasn’t just trying to be poetic when I strung together those observations about the miracle of mountains lining up such that a waterfall high on an imposing piece of granite is briefly struck by a single beam from the setting sun for a few weeks each winter, and – to reprise my post – noted that this all this happens in a place containing as many miracles as are found in this astonishing Valley. To see Horsetail Fall gradually and silently turn sunset colors in this amazing place in the company of others seeking the same experience is perhaps a greater thing than making another photograph of it, as much as those of us who make photographs want to do so with almost every experience.
Take care,
Dan
(One last, mundane point. That “if I can capture that, then maybe I’m a good photographer” idea is probably pretty important, too – and I don’t begrudge anyone that goal. Emulation has a very important place in learning any expressive art. It isn’t that the goal should be to make photographs that look like (or “equal”) those of some other photographer, but we learn a lot through emulation along the way.)
Dan, your post and all the comments here echo my mixed feelings about Horsetail Fall. I too wish that more people would just come to watch it. I remember taking my mother and one of her friends to see it many years ago, and they were thrilled. And Dan I think I have a similar attitude about icons. Since I photographed Horsetail in the mid-90s I haven’t had much desire to photograph it again myself unless I could do something different. And I never printed or published my photo of the waterfall because I thought it was simply an imitation of someone else’s image – Galen’s.
But then I started to see many other people publish and print their versions of Horsetail, and lead workshops to photograph it, and write blog posts about it, and that’s led me to face face a dilemma: should I just keep quiet and not show my own versions, or jump on the band wagon? It was clear that the genie was already out of the box, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon and start talking about it. There are all these people clamoring for information about it, and I’d rather they get it from me than from someone who doesn’t know the waterfall or Yosemite as well. But I don’t know – the crowds keep getting bigger and bigger, and I don’t know if I can still write about this in good conscience.
It still astounds me that so many people want to take a photograph almost exactly like thousands of other people’s photographs. I just don’t get it. I assumed that people who are fairly serious about photography – serious enough to go to Yosemite and try to photograph Horsetail Fall – became serious about photography because A) it was fun; but also B) because it’s a way of expressing themselves (in fact that’s much of the fun of it). I think somehow many folks have forgotten what kindled their passion for photography in the first place. Certainly taking a photo that’s much like thousands of others can’t be very creatively satisfying.
But perhaps there’s some other aspect of this that I don’t understand, maybe because I captured a good photograph of this phenomenon a long time ago. Maybe it’s just so beautiful and amazing that it compels people to want their own version, no matter how many other similar photographs have been made before. Maybe they just want to see it, and photography is an excuse. Maybe it’s a photographic pilgrimage, like Muslims to Mecca; it doesn’t matter how many people have made the journey before, you want to experience it yourself. Maybe it’s a measuring stick – “If I can capture that photo, then maybe I’m a pretty good photographer.” Maybe it’s to impress friends who’ve never seen a photo of Horsetail before. I see that all the time on Flickr, where someone posts an average photo of Horsetail, one that you and I have seen dozens (if not hundreds) of times before, and they get tons of comments and faves, and “Wow, how did you capture that – it’s amazing!” I suppose the motivations are as varied as the photographers.
I went early this year, on purpose, to avoid the crowds. I wanted to experience Yosemite in February and really had very little attachment to whether or not I got to shoot Horsetail. I’ve grown to love Yosemite to the point that I seek out more subtle beauty and find myself looking up less at the icons. I did feel like I had a very successful experience there that first week of February, having found that the late-day light plays beautifully across the meadows.
Robin, now we’re talking! :-)
Dan
Steve–I almost came back last night and left a “p.s.” similar to your comment about non-photographers. I would be completely delighted if more folks discovered horsetail as simply a beautiful phenomenon to observe. I think one of the things that drives us to take pictures is our desire to share with other what we experience, so I’m always happy when I’m out in the field and run into somebody who’s there just to enjoy the view. It made me smile to read that you ran into groups doing exactly that this year.
Hi Dan. I don’t like the crowds either and you were very blessed to have been there and photographed
this scene before the masses came. I’ve never been to this area so I do appreciate the time you and other photographers spend capturing these beautiful moments and sharing them. I follow you on facebook and love your photos and your articles. Thank you.
I remember seeing the Galen Rowell photo probably in the ’80’s but when I first started working in Yosemite in 2005, I was blown away that everyone was trying to shoot the same thing. I just didn’t get it. As cool as the phenomenon was, the El Cap picnic area just isn’t that great of a place to hang out. Afterwards, I found that photographers, especially GROUPS of photographers just bugged the crap out of me, with all their talk of ISO’s and f-stops. As a videographer, I always wanted to remind them that my medium records audio too, and I’d have to listen to all that talk yet again when I logged my footage. So I was anti-Horsetail Fall for a few years.
This year however, I decided to produce an episode of my web video series Yosemite Nature Notes about the fall. I finally rationalized that it’s great that so many people want to come and observe this ellusive event. I also noticed a lot more people this year who came to just watch, not photograph. On one evening I was at the spot about a 1/2 mile up-canyon from ECPA and of the 30 or so folks there, I’d say 80% didn’t have a camera. That made me feel good about the crowds. These people were here to worship a waterfall, and as a former hippy, I’m all for that. Of course the crowds on the Sunday night of Presidents Day weekend reminded me of everything I dislike about big groups of photographers. What a night!
So now my new episode just came out and it has already gone viral. It’s got 26,000 views in 3 days, and I’m sure that it will be adding to the crowds next year. We’ll just have to wait and see what the effects are, and what the Nat’l Park Service does to address an issue that has already existed for a few years, mainly too many cars and not enough pavement.
Steve, I really enjoyed your video, and appreciated the perhaps understated theme that there is more going on here than just a photo opportunity. I got this from a few of the comments you picked up for folks waiting around to see the thing, and from a particular sentence in the interview with Michael Frye. You may have noticed that the basic, underlying point of my post is not really about photographing Horsetail, but about what Horsetail is and might represent.
By the way, I’ve enjoyed a number of your Yosemite videos. I really enjoyed the one about the Yosemite Ranger House – I’m a real sucker for the historical stuff, things I didn’t know about and might have overlooked, and ties back to the earlier days of the park – and that piece had all three in spades.
Take care,
Dan
Robin, you wrote pretty much the post I originally had in mind, and your thoughts are very, very close to mine on this subject. Edie, one of my pleasant memories of earlier visits to Horsetail was running into you (and your thermos of coffee, IIRC) at the picnic area. :-)
About photographing icons… I wrote that I do not completely avoid them. As I like to say, “There is a reason they are icons!” (Plus, while the crowds are focusing on nearby icons, some of us can more easily find quiet and solitude elsewhere… ;-)
Dan
I think we met up on that night a couple of years ago, Dan; Earlier in February of that year I post-holed up to my thighs out to the picnic area, braved a frozen butt from sitting on the snow, drank Thera-flu from my Jetboil pot, and got some of my best shots ever of the falls.
Good times.
And I was the only one there.
http://littleredtent.net/LRTblog/2008/02/05/and-i-was-the-only-one-there/
Interesting thoughts on a topic that I’ve contemplated as well, especially lately. I’m coming at this as someone who’s much newer to landscape photography–this year was the first time I’ve had a chance to try my hand (and my camera) at Horsetail. Because there was an extended conversation on Twitter about shooting icons, I tried to sort out for myself why I was going to shoot it. Ultimately, I settled on two (primary) reasons–one, just to see if I could do it (a desire from a purely technical aspect), and two, because I wanted to see for my own eyes what it looks like when (and if) the light hit the falls.
I was only semi-successful, but came away with an image I still like pretty well–I caught a second, smaller ephemeral fall to the left of Horsetail, which I thought was kind of neat. But I passed up a couple of subsequent opportunities this month to give it another try, I think because I didn’t really see the point. With a couple of other shot-to-death spots in the park, I can’t resist going over and over to at least just check, because the conditions can be so radically different (clouds and color or the surprise of a rising full moon at Valley View), but to get the iconic Horsetail shot, there’s not that much variation in the end result. And I really don’t like dealing with the hordes of other photographers–I don’t mind a few others around, but it starts to feel ridiculous when rows of photographers are lined up like they’re in the end zone or sidelines at a football game. Not something that appeals to me. When I was there last weekend, another photographer stopped me and asked if I was there to shoot Horsetail, and was that a good spot. I told him about the two main spots, but also told him conditions almost certainly wouldn’t materialize for the effect–there was far too much cloud cover from the winter storm. I gestured around us and told him there were still fantastic things to shoot with the changing light (but not Horsetail). Sadly, he declined and said he was off to the picnic area to wait it out, just in case.