Afternoon Light, Forest and Cliff. Yosemite Valley, California. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
Yosemite Valley forest and cliffs in hazy late afternoon light
This past weekend I had time to visit Yosemite Valley for a couple of hours. That doesn’t sound like much time, but it is enough to see a few things and make a few photographs. (We would have had more time, but we were distracted by migratory birds as we crossed the Central Valley, and by the time we arrived in the park it was mid afternoon.) Coming into the Valley we spotted the first evidence of the annual migration of the Horsetail Fall photographers, lined up in a spot along the Merced River a few hours before sunset. (We saw more of them on the way out of the Valley later in the evening.)
For me, photography in the Valley is often about the light, with the quality of the atmosphere being close to the light in importance. Given that there were no clouds I was not too optimistic about the prospects, but when we arrived at a meadow late in the afternoon I saw some beautiful haze that was starting to be backlit by the lowering sun. I found some trees — the group in this photograph and others in a pair of photographs I’ll share later — and I looked for a composition that eliminated the bright sky, that put the sun close to directly behind the trees, and which put some of the valley walls and towers in the frame in order to provide some form and textural relief to the haze. Then it was a matter of lining up the elements of the photograph so that the tallest trees were within the outline of a large tower. Shooting almost straight into the sun (and engaging in interesting gymnastics in order to shield the front element of my lens from flare-producing direct light), I made a few exposures.
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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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.