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".