Just a quick note to say that in my never-ending attempt to be one of the really cool kids I have accepted the invitation to set up an account with Google+. Now I just have to figure out a) how to use it, and b) how to integrate it with all of the other bits and pieces of my online presence. In any case, if you are on Google+ and feel like expanding your circles, you know what to do.
I have also set up a 500px account since I was told that all the cool kids are there, too! Can’t fall behind!
In other news, I’m hoping to be doing some street and architectural photography in San Francisco tomorrow morning.
Trees growing on granite silhouetted against a colorful sunset sky at Olmsted Point, Yosemite National Park.
This astonishing, magical light occurred just at and right after sunset on the evening of June 18, the day that Tioga Pass finally opened for the 2011 summer season. I earlier posted a vertical format photograph of much the same scene, though with slightly different light – the other photograph was made about a minute after this one and the conditions were changing very rapidly.
The photograph was made from the popular Olmsted Point overlook along the Tioga Pass Road (highway 120), with its well-known view of subalpine Tenaya Lake. Since I have recounted the story of this light in some detail in an earlier post, I’ll keep this description somewhat short, but here is the genera outline. Earlier in the evening I had come here to try to photograph Mount Conness with a long lens. Initially the light was very unpromising, but I observed some things that suggested the possibility of sunset light so I stuck around. Just before sunset, as the sun dropped near the horizon to the west, the light came from below to illuminate the thin, high clouds and produce an amazing color show.
To make the series of photographs of these trees I simply pivoted my tripod around from the direction it had been pointing, towards Mount Conness. The trees are somewhat sparse here since the granite domes and slabs cannot support many of them. The speed of light and color transition was remarkable. At one or more points, as the clouds picked up the sunset glow, the brightness of the light suddenly increased noticeably. The brightest color moved across the sky from east to west, and here the color was just beginning to diminish ever so slightly overhead as it continues to intensify to the west and closer to the horizon.
The final evening alpenglow illuminates the summit ridge of Mount Conness and the west face of Medlicott Dome in the Yosemite National Park high country.
This will be my final photograph of Mount Conness from the evening of June 18, the day that Tioga Pass Road opened this year and the day of one of the most spectacular Yosemite high country sunsets in recent memory. It will be the final both in the sense that I think I’ve now shared the best of the group of images of this sunset and in the sense that it was literally my final exposure of the evening.
The short back-story is that what started out as a fairly unimpressive evening (at least in the photographic sense) transformed over a short period into something extraordinary as the sun dropped to the horizon west of the Sierra and illuminated the clouds from below, creating rare and very special alpenglow conditions over a wide area of the Sierra. (During the week that followed quite a few people commented on this amazing light, which they had witnessed from locations as distant as Mono Lake on the east side and the Central Valley to the west.)
When I made this photograph the show was coming to an end. At this point the sun had already set a few minutes earlier – the exposure was made around 8:45 p.m. – and the light was low enough to require a six-second exposure. While it may seem like Mount Conness (the tallest peak near the left on the skyline) and other features are receiving direct sunlight, this is actually the remaining post-sunset glow in the western sky.
NOTE: THIS IS NOT A FINISHED POST – IT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS…
(This article is an experiment in web publishing. Rather that keeping this article hidden until it is finished, I’m going to make a link to this draft version available and let folks watch it evolve and even comment if they are so inclined. With that in mind, a few assumptions going into this:
Since this is a draft version of a work in progress, there are no guarantees of accuracy!
Material that appears in the draft may or may not appear in the final version – heck, it may change while you are viewing it!
Helpful comments are welcome and even encouraged. For various reasons – including a desire to control the length of the final piece – I can’t guarantee that I’ll respond to or include all contributions.
Since my approach to writing is often to spew lots of words and go back later to trim (some of) the excess verbiage, excuse the inevitable “wordiness” of the draft.
If this works, I may try it with future posts. If it doesn’t, I might change my mind about this one!
When the (what passes for) final version of the post is created, the material at this URL may disappear and it will become available at a new URL.
Thanks,
Dan)
This material is current unavailable while revisions are underway. Thanks for your understanding…
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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