Exfoliated and fractured granite ledges form patterns in late afternoon light, Yosemite National Park.
While this particular spot happens to be in the neighborhood of Tenaya Creek, similar features may be found throughout Yosemite and in many other parts of the Sierra. These rocks have probably been eroded in just about every way possible. They have been broken away from the underlying rock via exfoliation. The area was obviously glaciated. No doubt freezing water helped to widen the patterns of cracks and break up the rocks.
I made the photograph in late afternoon light when the sun was just barely above a low ridge beyond the upper edge of the photograph. The zoom was cranked out as wide as it goes in order to capture a good width and density of these wonderfully broken up rocks and the trees and other plants that somehow manage to live on and among them.
Evening along the High Line Park as thunderstorm weather approaches, New York City.
This was a fun photograph to make and a bit of a challenge. I decided to shoot with just a 50mm prime as we walked the Highline Park in New York City, trying to keep things simple and shooting quickly and handheld. Our plan was to be there a bit more than an hour before sunset so that we could see and photograph the evening light. That didn’t quite work out…
About the time we started walking at the south end of the Highline we noticed a big electrical storm developing over the water in New Jersey. While the giant storm to our west spoiled our chances of sunset light, it created other interesting opportunities as the sky darkened. In fact, it becomes so dark an hour or so before sunset that hand held shooting was becoming difficulty, even at ISO 800, f/2 or f2.8 and as low as 1/15 second! But because there was still some light, as streetlights and other lighting came on there was still enough illumination to register the unlighted or less lighted areas – it was almost like doing night photography without the need for the tripod or the super long exposures!
This shot was handheld, probably at the lower end of the range of my ability to shoot this way, but there was enough light to still make the sky and buildings visible, yet give the appearance that the scene was largely artificially lit.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.
That was the question that someone posed today in a photography forum I read:
We will be visiting Yosemite for approximately 7-8 hours one day the 2nd week of October as part of a weeklong trip to Tahoe (we live on the East Coast). I have been to Yosemite before (many years ago), she has not. Although we know it would take much more time to truly experience Yosemite this is the maximum time we can spend so we are looking for the top spots so we can make the most of the short time we have there.
(There was a bit more that I haven’t included here – the poster also would be staying in Mariposa the night before, and needed to drive across Tioga Pass and be in Tahoe that evening… and wanted to do photography along the way!)
Having visited the park for decades, and for an amount of time perhaps totaling well over a year altogether, and still getting to know the place, my first reaction was to ignore the question or respond with a wise-crack one-liner. Frankly, I don’t think it is really possible to do real photography of “the park” during a seven-hour visit. (With careful planning it would be possible to photograph a subject or two perhaps, but that is a different issue.) In any case, I suppressed my instinct to respond along the lines of “are you kidding!?” and instead tried to provide a realistic outline of what this experience might entail. While I’m spoiled, living only hours from the park, I do understand that others may find themselves in the area and not want to miss at least having a brief experience with such a place. And perhaps the way-too-brief visit might be enough to encourage such visitors to find a way to return for a longer visit.
So, with all of that in mind, here is what I wrote, slightly modified for this post:
You are asking quite a lot here… for a seven hour visit that will include at least 3-4 hours of driving… from Mariposa, into and around the Valley, and then up and over Tioga Pass… plus leaving enough time for the remaining hours-long drive to Tahoe.
Too bad, I’m afraid.
To be honest, the odds that you’ll be able to do much beyond “record-my-quick-visit” photography in the park are slender given the amount of time you’ll be there, your tight schedule, and the fact that you’ll be there mostly during the “blah light” time of day. To some extent, I’m inclined to recommend that you not make photography your primary goal – one reason being that trying to “get those photographs” will distract you even more from you brief opportunity to actually see and experience the place a bit. I photograph in the park frequently, so I know where and how to shoot, and I would not try to do real photography under the conditions you describe.
The nearly- full moon rises above the sunset light on Kuna Crest, Yosemite National Park.
Kuna Crest runs up Lyell Canyon between the Lyell and Dana forks of the Tuolumne River with the Sierra crest at one end and Mammoth Peak at the other. (Mammoth Peak is the large peak straight in front of you as you top Tioga Pass entering Yosemite National Park.) This ridge can catch great sunset light during the summer, and as I came down from the pass, heading back toward my camp at Porcupine Flat, and saw the almost full moon appearing over the shoulder of the ridge I decided to quickly stop and make a few exposures as the last light was about to leave the forest and soon after the peaks.
If you have tried photographing a scene that includes the moon in the early evening you know that the exposure is a tricky thing. The moon is lit by daylight, so it isn’t too surprising that the “correct” exposure for the moon is close to a normal daytime exposure. But that is not the right exposure for the rest of the scene, which turns out to be quite a bit darker than daylight at this time of day. In this scene things were even more complicates as the very saturated red colors on the ridge were quite “hot,” while the foreground meadow and forest was in shade and both darker and cooler in color. Basically, the dynamic range between the moon and the foreground was too large for a single exposure… so I made several.
At the time of exposure I thought that I might need as many as three component images in the final photograph – they would be one exposed for the bright ridge and sky, one exposed for the rather dark and shadowed foreground, and possibly a third that correctly exposed the moon. To be on the safe side I bracketed four exposures. When I began to work on the image I figured out that in this case I could construct a final “believable” image from two exposures if I was careful and could make some additional adjustments during post.
This is an example of a shot in which the use of a graduated neutral density filter could have been problematic, but where exposure blending could work very well. (“Exposure blending” is one term for the process of manually combining two component exposures using masked layers in Photoshop. No, it is not the same thing as HDR photography.) One of the things that would have been quite tricking using graduated neutral density filters is that the division between the brighter upper half and the darker lower half is not linear. Instead, the roughly follows the curved boundary between the lower meadow and dark trees and the still sunlit trees and the peak and sky.
(Basic EXIF data may be available by “mousing over” large images in posts. Leave a comment if you want to know more.)
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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