February Yosemite, Part II

Yep, I'm just lucky to live near enough to Yosemite to go there TWICE this month. I went there with my brother Dave and his wife, his daughter and her hubby but, it was not without some trouble along the way. We met up in Groveland and had a great burger at the Irondoor Saloon, the oldest bar in California, established before 1852. We continued on up the highway to the Yosemite Gatehouse Lodge and found that no one was anywhere to be found. Since we couldn't check in and nobody would answer the phone, we did some investigating on our own and found that the rooms we wanted were messy and not at all ready. In fact, we decided we didn't want to stay there ever again.....lol.

Sooooooooooo, we got back on the road and headed for Yosemite Valley. Luckily, we were able to get a couple of rooms for Thursday night with no promises for Friday night. Below is a picture of the view from this $178 per night room. Dave's room pretty much had a view of a construction yard, though.

The next morning, we were successful in keeping our rooms for another night. That freed us up to go for a hike of my choosing, and the Yosemite Falls trail was conveniently right there, beckoning us ascend to views unlike any in the world. The below picture shows our destination on the tip of that wooded point on the left side of the photo.

Now, I had been up there before and so had Dave. I was hoping that my niece's hubby, Ryan, would be able to tolerate the strenuous climb. It turned out that the trail was quite a bit steeper than we could remember. On the way up, we ran across some wildlife that were obviously well-adjusted to human presence. This one deer in the picture below was happily grazing only 8 feet away from us, only caring about the noises coming from the unseen hikers. Sixty switchbacks and at least 600 vertical feet up, we finally crested the worst of the trail, hearing rock and ice falling from the cliffs above at regular intervals. After that, the trail eases into traversing a fairly wide ledge under the trees for a half mile to the first glimpse of the Upper Yosemite Falls. I certainly wasn't disappointed and took tons of pictures and several digital videos of the falls.

Deciding not to play with my wide angle lens, I took advantage of the powerful zoom to get in VERY close to the falls and get some wonderful "abstracts" of the "snowfalls". When it gets cold enough in Yosemite, the waterfalls turn into very large snowmaking machines. Much of the falling water does turn into snow before it hits the ground. The ever-changing swirls and surges just captivates and mesmerizes you. I have several pics like the one below that I really think could sell as fine art pieces.

I'll post some more, along with the great shot of a bobcat that my brother took (and that I missed....I didn't get even a single shot because my memory card was full.)

Enjoy!

A couple of bonus pics

I again glanced through some of my latest shots and picked out two more. Since I took these, it has snowed on the floor of Yosemite Valley and I hope to go back soon. At least before I go there with some of my family members, next weekend. This one below is a close-up of Bridalveil Falls, again, with that annoying bright white. Bridalveil Falls is known for its unexpected changes due to squirrelly (is that really a word?) winds. The natives knew the falls as "Pohono", meaning "bad wind".

And, this one is yet another reflection picture that shows, more than anything, that it truly WAS a good day for taking pictures. Will these pictures sell? Probably not but, it was great going there and just taking them.

New Pics!

I went down to Yosemite Valley during the midweek, with the promise of perfect weather conditions for picture taking. There were very few tourists wandering about and I had free run of the valley. I decided to re-visit some places I went once before and had great results. I did, however, run into some technical glitches with my wide angle lens and the automatic exposure settings. I'm a bit disappointed that all of my pics didn't reach my high standards. Of course, it's "operator error" and I'm gonna have to do more "bracketing" (multiple exposure settings) the next time. Some of the brighter waterfall pictures had over-exposed white water in them. Ditto for the bright white granite that Yosemite is known for. The below picture is an attempt to balance the light and shadow.

This next picture didn't involve the wide angle lens because I needed the full 22X zoom to get closer to that famous tree on that El Capitan ledge. The tree in the foreground is actually across the Merced River from where I took this shot. I remember seeing the tree on the ledge when I took a field trip to Yosemite as a kid.

I just HAD to snap off some pics when confronted with a rainbow so close. Everything was perfect except for the annoying "mist on the lens syndrome". Again, this is where the whiteness of the falls was so blurred and, this was the best of the shots I took of this scene. Also in this picture, you can see where my final destination was for that morning. I climbed up to the upper left-hand portion of the photo to almost get behind the falls (and get out of the mist).

This picture is from that final destination spot. It was such an awesome place to be with the sun, the rocks, the sky and the water all around me. Time seems to stand still and the rest of the world goes away (except for the occasional tourists on the bridge below, doing what millions of tourists do, year after year). I also took some digital video of the falls, which came out fairly good (as long as I edit out the misty portions at the end of each video clip).

Finally, I ended up at Bridalveil Falls towards the mid-afternoon. I also had problems with the brightness of the falling water but, this next picture mixed light and shadow very well. To me, it's a very mysterious-looking photo that could almost belong in the "Lord of the Rings".

Here's a couple of mossy macro shots that caught my eye. Yeah, I staged em but, they did come out pretty nice, eh?