A seasonal stream cascades over a granite ledge along Tioga Pass Road, Yosemite National Park.
This small cascade is one of hundreds seen along Tioga Pass Road on June 18 this year, the day the park service opened the road for the season. The opening date was later than usual due to the heavy snowpack, and there was water everywhere as the snow melt accelerated in the late spring weather. It was almost embarrassingly easy to find and photograph these subjects – this one was right next to the roadway.
This is part of a larger cascade, out of view to the right, that flows off the top of a granite area and drops quickly across granite cliffs. Here the water strikes a slanting ledge and bits of spray explode almost like Fourth of July fireworks. Obviously, the somewhat unusually long shutter speed was selected with this effect in mind. The reddish plants to the left, just beginning to come back to life after the long winter, hint at the early date in the season.
A seasonal spring cascade falls across the granite face of Polly Dome, Yosemite National Park.
I know that the chance to see the high country in winter-like conditions is part of what draws people to the opening of Tioga Pass Road, especially after a heavy snowfall season like this one. But for me the water is at least as much of a draw. The high country comes alive in ways that are not seen during the rest of the year. Because of the long and warmer days, the rate of snow melt accelerates, and when the snowpack is as deep as it is this year, that sets loose an amazing amount of meltwater.
I find full-flowing creeks in places where I didn’t even realize that water flowed. Creeks become raging torrents that threaten to jump their banks. In many places they do rise high enough to flood large expanses of meadow. Seasonal water falls and cascades appear almost everywhere you look.
I spotted this slender cascade high on the granite slopes of Polly Dome, above Tenaya Lake. My first idea was to make a photograph in which a longer stretch of the fall would appear, dropping perhaps several hundred feet. But as often happens, the more I worked this scene the more I wanted to eliminate extraneous material – and I ended up shooting at 400mm to edit out as much of the surround as I could.
A small tree stands in the raging spring torrent of Cascade Creek, Yosemite National Park.
This may be the final photograph in this series I shot in early May when I visited this seasonal cascade on the way into Yosemite Valley. Compared to some of the others this one takes in a larger portion of the scene, mainly so that I could include the little leafless tree or bush at the lower left, as it stands against the tremendous force of the rushing water descending steeply among the rocks.
This creek is fed by seasonal snow melt fairly early in the season because the ares that feed its flow are at a relatively lower elevation. For a while each year, but especially in a wet year like this one, this little creek rages as it drops precipitously down this narrow canyon towards a point below where it flows into the Merced River. A bridge provides an interesting vantage point from which to shoot almost directly down into the torrent.
Runoff from spring snow melt rushes over boulders of Cascade Creek, Yosemite National Park.
I recently posted the black and white version of this photograph of Cascade Creek in full spring flow. I am still undecided about which I prefer. I haven’t printed either as of the date of this posting, and the results of that further work may help me decide.
The color version of this photograph posed a series of post-processing questions and problems that others who have worked with a scene like this one can probably imagine. The creek descends through a narrow, rocky gorge at this point and I photographed it early in the morning before any direct sunlight was able to reach the water. Benefits of shooting at this time included the softer light, which tends to both throw some light into the shadows and to soften the brightest highlights. This also permits a longer exposure which allows the water to blur a bit and express the wild motion of the creek. However, since the primary source of light was the open sky, the camera “sees” a very blue scene. (Our visual system compensates for this, so it doesn’t look as blue as it really is when you are on the scene.)
There are several ways to deal with the color balance issues that this situation creates. You could just “go with the blue,” and I’ve seen photographs done that way. I’ve even seen some in which the photograph amped up the saturation and ended up with something very blue. In general, that’s not my thing! I’m most often looking for something that seems “believable” – it may not be objectively accurate, but I intend it to be “subjectively accurate.” With this in mind, my first instinct was simply to warm the color balance in order to move away from the blue cast and toward a warmer one.
My immediate impression was that this was an improvement, and I worked with this interpretation for several days – but something about it didn’t sit quite right with me. (This is perhaps one reason that I also worked with the black and white rendition in the meantime.) Eventually I did some comparisons between the “warmed up” version and the original… and neither seemed like what I was after. The overly blue original looked garish but the overly warm version seemed artificial. I tried some other approaches and finally discovered that because the blue was so intense that I could simply desaturate it – more than you might think – and keep the “colder” coloration without letting it overwhelm the image.
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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