A Winter's Day In Yosemite Valley

Once again, I chose to go where other people don't. Even with it being a holiday, I knew where I could go to avoid people. My choice to walk up the closed Four Mile Trail was very good but, finding a shot through the thick oaks and Douglas firs was difficult. There were some icy and snowy parts on the trail but I had a nice burst of energy to climb pretty far to get this fine shot.

I also had very fine views of the impressive profile of the mighty El Capitan. Someday, I want to walk along that edge. This zoomed in shot shows that those trees on top are just so tiny compared to the 3000 foot cliff.

I really like it when I can use the wide angle in a vertical mode.

On the drive in on Big Oak Flat Road, I looked up and across the canyon to see how much snow there was on potential afternoon shooting locations. I settled on "The Rostrum", accessible from the west end of the Wawona Tunnel. It was a relatively easy walk down to the edge of a 500 foot cliff, with nice views of Bridalveil and Cascade Falls. The sun was nice and it was easy to ignore the noise of a holiday weekend in Yosemite Valley.

On the way out, I stopped at a popular roadside spot to view Bridalveil Falls and the icy cliffs above. Many, many years ago, my Brother Dave and I took a cross country ski trip from Badger Pass, mostly across tricky, untracked spring snow, to end up at the top of these cliffs.

Sentinel Rock and Glacier Point

I took yet another trip to smoky Yosemite and my destination was Sentinel Rock. I have been atop Sentinel Dome twice in the past so, I just walked on by it on my way to the edge of Yosemite Valley. I had a vague idea that Sentinel Rock wasn't very easy to get to but, I wanted to check out that rugged part of the Park for myself. When I wandered off the trail, I found that there was a 15 foot wall blocking my access and there was no way to safely drop off. I looked and looked and there was a potential way of getting there but that would involve a similarly dangerous "long way around".

So, I cut my losses and snapped off as many pics as i wanted and planned my Plan B. Right here is a picture of the farthest I could get, standing on a cliff, looking towards the massive El Capitan.

I spied this snag growing on the edge of the rugged cliff of Sentinel Rock so, I took out my telephoto lens and zoomed into the snag with El Capitan as a background.

I was hoping that Yosemite Falls would still have a pretty good flow, with Sentinal Rock being just right across the valley. The early snowmelt has drained the watershed of fresh springwater and it now is a scant trickle, as you can see. This is a quite different view of the famous Upper Falls and part of the very interesting inner gorge.

Here is a distant view of North Dome and Basket Dome, pulled in with my telephoto lens. Years ago, I took a hike and visited the top of both of them. Very few people go there, with the 10 mile roundtrip from the Tioga Pass Road.

Walking back via the trail, I had this nice view of Half Dome. Zooming into this shot, using Photoshop, I could see individual people on top of this Yosemite icon. Clouds Rest looms behind Half Dome and the peak has, arguably, the best view in all of Yosemite. I was once there and took pictures but, the roll of film somehow disappeared. Maybe I'll make it back up there, one day.

The Revenge of the New Camera

Back in 2003, when my Fuji S-5000 was new, I came to Yosemite to thoroughly break-in my new toy. I've shot many of the same shots I did last time. Despite having troubles with not reading the manual, I still ended up with some nice pictures, after an exercise in digital light manipulation.

I like how this one shows off a more generic part of Yosemite Valley in the background. Curry Village and the Happy Isles get so little sun this time of year, in the shadow of Glacier Point. I don't think I've ever seen pics of Lower Yosemite Falls from this angle before.

While resting at the top of the hike, I looked up and saw this imposing scene. I felt that tilting this image up on end made for a much better composition than how I originally shot it.

The forest on the Yosemite Valley floor is interwoven with the colorful California Black Oak carving out its own niche in the conifer-dominated ecosystem of today.

Autumn Falls! The fall colors contrast so well with those same old blues and greens we see all year round. I just knew I had to find some way to get this showy little bush into the foreground of this scene.

Scan-O-Mania!

Here's a picture that I was able to "recover", using the digital photo tools I have at my disposal. This Kodachrome slide was way underexposed and was completely unusable. I adjusted the scan controls and played with all the enhancement settings and came up with this very nice photo from my snow camping trip on Glacier Point back in the 90's.

Here's another nice reflection shot that was uncropped from the original slide. This was my attempt at "fine art" but, I've found better examples in some of the other Grant Lake photos. I know that my "eye" is more tuned and more experienced now and I'm enjoying the rediscovery of my old pictures.

This next shot was from a Backcountry Ski Club trip to the Bishop Pass area of Kings Canyon National Park. This is true wilderness, where man only comes as a visitor and Mother Nature has no problem in telling you when it's time to leave. This National Park is as rugged and remote as any other in America. Not many humans have ever been to this spot!

During a drought winter, back in the early 90's, I wandered up the Yosemite Falls trail and did a little off-trail exploring in the area between the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls. I love the browns and the textures of the rocks. Someday I'll get down into that "inner gorge".

Finally, we have yet another Grant Lake picture. I'm not completely happy with how the scan came out. The picture lost some of that great "golden hour" light that was in the original Kodachrome slide. This picture also seems to have great opportunities for cropping out some more great pics.

New Yosemite scans!

To flesh out my new Mpix ( http://www.mpix.com/ ) book to use as a Yosemite portfolio, I scanned these old Kodachrome slides recently. It's really cool to be able to go back to those trips and, basically, re-compose many of those old shots.

This one below came out pretty well, without too much scanning trouble. I didn't crop this one of Yosemite's Natural Arch.

I was intrigued whether I could crop and improve on this interesting "rainbow" shot of Yosemite Falls from Glacier Point. I still need to be more skilled at sharpening these kinds of pictures without overdoing it. It just might work better as a black and white photo.

This shot, from Stanford Point on a skiing trip, took a lot of fiddling and I'm still not satisfied with the results. I was able to tone down a bluish cast and do some sharpening but, I'd be happy if the picture looked exactly like the original. More practice is needed to sort through all the jam-packed features of my Nikon scanner.

On the other hand, this pic came out looking almost exactly like the original. I still think this pic also has a bluish cast and could benefit from greener greens. I love the glacial polish and juniper trees are one of my few favorites. The Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne is a deep V-shaped canyon that was home to the Sierra Nevada's longest glacier, over 40 miles long at its largest during the Ice Ages.

I stumbled across this slide and looked for a way to crop a great picture out of the original. That afternoon and early evening had terrific light and Grant Lake was obviously perfectly glassy.

Videos!!

New to Blogger is the ability to publish videos! Here's my first video post of Upper Yosemite Falls during the wet spring of 2006. You might be in for a long wait if you don't have some form of high speed Internet.

Enjoy!

More pictures

This blog is mostly about pictures so I'll post some more. These all came from a late spring trip to Yosemite Valley when all the waterfalls were gushing, bigtime. Sentinel and Ribbon Falls were both as active as I have ever seen them. Yosemite Falls were just awesome in its power and majesty. Hopefully, I'll figure out how to post a video I took on that day.

Upper Yosemite Falls was roaring that day and I couldn't have picked a better day to go to the Valley and play with my camera.

Bridalveil Falls is always a favorite because it's the first falls you see as you enter the valley.

Sentinel Falls is often missed by the average tourist and even non-existent in dry years. Someday, I'll climb up there and get some closer shots but, on that day, I was taking advantage of my 10x optical zoom.