A photograph from a series I made during a recent pre-dawn visit to Glacier Point in early November. The light was, of course, beautiful. I can strongly recommend an autumn visit to this location and at this hour. While Glacier Point is frequently a very busy place, crawling with tourists, there were only four of us there on this morning – and we got to enjoy the rare and wonderful experience of quietly enjoying dawn over the Sierra from a truly astonishing vantage point.
(A few practical issues: Check before going there this time of year; it won’t be long before winter snowfall closes the road to Glacier Point to all but hardy cross-country skiers. And, if you do go, dress warmly!)
Spending a lot of time in the forests of the Sierra Nevada and elsewhere, my point of view regarding wildfires has changed since I was younger. Leaving aside for a moment the possible human cost when a fire overruns homes and other structures, wildfires are a normal part of the forest ecology, and suppressing them has actually caused a number of problems. Once I started to think of wild fires as something part of the natural process and not as disasters I became interested in how I might photograph forests that had been burned.
For the most part I’ve been unsuccessful in creating such images, but I like this one. Many of my previous attempts have focused on the image of forests of burned tree trunks, sometimes with new growth starting below, or on the hillsides laid bare by fire, or on the new growth itself. This is a more intimate view of a fire zone than I’ve tried before – and I feel like it works even more in the larger versions of the image that are not posted here.
This probably doesn’t look remotely like a “Yosemite Valley photograph” to those who haven’t spent some time there, but I find that aspects of the Valley beyond the obvious (and truly spectacular) major attractions define the place as much or more for me. These oaks are in one of my favorite places, El Capitan Meadow.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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