Yosemite National Park

I think the best time to visit Yosemite is February. There is still some snow around the valley. The trees and the snow shine mystically because of the sun rays through the patchy clouds. Certainly a sight to behold.

Shot from the Tunnel View

Half Dome is a granite dome at the eastern end of Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park, California. It is a well-known rock formation in the park, named for its distinct shape. One side is a sheer face while the other three sides are smooth and round, making it appear like a dome cut in half.The granite crest rises more than 1,444 m above the valley floor.

Tioga Pass Yosemite National Park, California, USA September 2016

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• Edmund Burke.

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Most people who go to Yosemite National park will recognize this view as Tunnel view and its one of the trademark images of Yosemite national park. I have shot this scene before but this time we wanted to do something different and hence ended up hiking to Artist point which about half a mile away from the parking lot and requires a lot climbing and scrambling. Actually the hike is almost entirely elevation gain and not a good thing to do when the sunset is already happening as we literally had no time to take a breather. I was almost certain that I was going to have a heart attack, at least a couple of times during our scramble.

I know this view point is not that far from Tunnel view but the this vista has an entirely different perspective due to the elevation gain and to add to it we got to watch most spectacular sunset I have ever witnessed at Yosemite. Yosemite, to me at least, has always been a sunrise location and I was properly stocked to get a sunset this pretty and I had high hopes for next day’s sunrise shoot. But that’s a story for another day’s post. Hope you like this image, thanks for visiting.

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• Amos Bronson Alcott.

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I took this one when we took a stop at the Tioga pass road after stopping at Mono Lakeas part of our 4th of July 2013 road trip. As we reached the location we took the drive all the way and then parked and took a small nap while waiting for the sun to move from directly above our heads. Then we took the drive back at a more leisurely pace back through the pristine Yosemite high country. I saw this location purely by chance and was a bit skeptical about this shot as the sun was still fairly up there and light was a bit harsh. So I decided to get my LEE big stopper out and use it to bring some interestingness to the picture. As if on cue an elderly gentleman walked into my frame with his fishing gear and started fishing.

I am still not entirely convinced about including people in my landscape shots but this came out much better than anything I could imagine at that time. The scene and the landscape here is fantastic and I hope to return here again when the light is far more favorable. After all its just 5 hour drive from my home. I just hope that this gentleman will be still there fishing and enjoying his time.

• John Muir.

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Yosemite National Park without water. One of the things that I surprised me when I visited this Park was the big areas burned and shortage of water. People told this year has been a very dry year. Welcome to environment change. This photo was taken from Tunnel View.

Yosemite National Park, California, USA September 2016

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• William Makepeace Thackeray.

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One of the most stunning sights of the Yosemite Valley, the Upper and Lower Yosemite falls. The first time I visited the valley we actually didn’t had much time to explore these magnificent falls even though they are quite close to the park center. This time though we made the time and casually walked up to the lower falls and took pictures.

These falls are one of the trickiest falls I have ever photographed because they are tall and it’s almost impossible to even see the upper falls when you are standing right next to the lower falls and when you move further away it make it impossible to convey the true size of the falls. So this time I used a bit of trickery and included the giant trees which were in the foreground to get a better scale of the place.

Hope it works and everyone likes it. Thanks for visiting the weekends almost here..

• Aristotle.

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Yosemite National Park is an annual pilgrimage for my wife and I since we moved to Southern California a while ago. While we have been to the park many times, it was during a winter visit to the park that it showed us the most amazing sight in Yosemite Valley. On this particular day, we woke early for a sunrise shoot and found that the Merced River has perfectly still water all around the valley. I posted the shots of the Park’s Iconic locations immediately but forgot about this panorama stitch image.

This shot was taken by the riverside with the north canyon walls and the dried-up Upper Yosemite falls to the left. I composed this image as a perfectly symmetric image with the granite cliffs and the reflections impeccably spaced. I usually try to stay away from this type of compositions as it looks a bit artificial or forced to me, but my OCD tend to drive these compositions when the chances present themselves.

As seen from Glacier Point, Yosemite National Park, California...

• Henry David Thoreau.

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Panorama from Tunnel View location at Yosemite Valley. It’s the second time I have been in this location In freezing early morning temperatures hoping to view some dramatic sky. I have been disappointed both times on that aspect. The first time I had grey skies and the second time I was met with crystal clear sky. I think I need to check the weather conditions for Yosemite Valley more often. We spend the whole morning here without noticing even a single cloud. Let’s just say my exp here is the opposite of what I usually get at Valley view.

This is one is again a stitched panorama shot of the entire valley stitched from about 40 shots. Hope everyone like it. Thanks for visiting and have a great day..

• Thomas Carlyle.

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Another shot from the spectacular valley view scenic vista point at Yosemite Valley. I took this shot when we visited the Yosemite National Park this winter. This is a pretty popular destination and I myself have posted pics from this location before. So I wanted to capture this shot a bit differently and I my opinion his location is spectacular shortly after sunrise. I reached on time and as ready, I also had planned to take a panorama stitch using a slightly normal focal length instead of the Wide angle I usually go for.

While setting up the tripod I realized that the wind had died down and it resulted in almost perfect reflection of the epic peaks on Merced River. This almost never happens for me and I was quick to keep clicking and got about 100 odd pictures before the wind picked up and the reflections were lost. Funny thing was that I had amazing reflection shots at three different locations at the valley that day. Felt pretty cool about that. Thanks for visiting and the encouragement. Hope you all have a great weekend.

Yosemite NP, view from Glacier Point to Half Dome

• Margaret Mead.

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Keeping up with moody foggy images, here is a photo I took from Atrist’s point at Yosemite National Park. We had made a quick weekend trip to Yosemite and was hoping for some cool shots of th park in winter, I have a weather alert for Yosemite in an app and everytime inclement weather is reported, we get a notification. Unfortunately, we hoped for a snow storm but all we got was just the clouds and fog. Kind of cements a saying I have often heard guides, adventurists, and photographers’ repeats “Nature never cooperates”.

I also made a time lapse video at this location which howed the movement of the clouds as they got pummeled into this narrow canyon by unrelenting wind. Please check that out here and wait till the end to see landmark features of yosemilte valley get revealed. I haven’t had much of a chance to get back to timelapse since then and would really like to brush up on that skill a bit more.

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• Leo Buscaglia.

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Perhaps the most famous oak tree in California, located a short walk away from Yosemite Lodge in Cooks meadow, this tree has been photographed many times by some of the best photographers in the world. I have always wanted to take a picture of this tree with some snow on it but have never managed to do that so far. The best I could do was some early morning frost and with some nice light from the rising sun. This was taken after the extremely cloudy sunrise we had at tunnel view.

After taking this shot while packing my gear into the car my tripod tipped over and fell on its face. Luckily I had shortened the tripod legs so fall was only from about a foot height and my Lee filter holder took all the impact of the fall bending its brass crew without affecting lens or the camera. I am so thankful for small favors.

• Jean Paul.

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After the amazing sunset at Artist point we returned to tunnel view early in the morning to get a glimpse of the valley bathed in warm sunrise light. What we got was complete gray everywhere, the entire Yosemite valley was filled with fog. We spent most of the sunrise looking at a gray canvas but as the sun rose it started to warm up and fog started to clear. I initially had a plan to make a time lapse video here and went about setting up my camera for just that.

This shot is one of the images from the lime lapse when the fog cleared a bit and you could see much of the features of the valley. I only have about 10 shots like this from a list of almost 350 shots. Hope you all like the gray steel of Yosemite, thanks for visiting.

A rather unusual view of Half Dome in the haze, as seen from Olmsted Point in Yosemite National Park, California...

• John Muir.

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• Pablo Picasso.

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One of my favorite locations in all of California is the Valley view outlook point at Yosemite National Park. I have posted many photos of this location which provides a stunning view of the majestic El Capitan to the left, the stunning Sentinels with Bridal Veil Falls to the right and the serene Merced River as foreground interest. It’s pretty tough to beat a view as spectacular as this but the real reason I fell in love with this location is the fact that I always got amazing light whenever I was at this spot. This was my go-to spot when the weather was bad or if we are providing a quick drive-by for our relatives or friends who are visiting.

This photo was taken in the past summer when we did a quick tour of Yosemite, As usual, the golden hour kind of coincided with our stop and I managed to get some good shots.

Half Dome at sunset, as seen from Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park, Californa.... (high ISO due to failing light)

• Barbara Hepworth.

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A classic view of twin Yosemite falls, upper can be seen clearly from this view point along with the top part of the lower falls even through the thick tree line covers most of it. For some reason the last three times I was at the valley I over looked this area of the park and most of the time drove straight through. During this trip though I had time to stop and have relaxed time at the Cook Meadows parking lot and I made a stitch pano shot of the beautiful falls and the towering granite peaks. I wish there were a bit more color in the sky and the rocks. Hopefully I can return again for a sunrise shot to this beautiful scene again.

Thanks for visiting, hope you all are having a great start to your week..

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

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The iconic Valley view of Yosemite Valley, I have taken so many pictures at this location that it has practically become a tradition to go here and shoot whenever we visit Yosemite Valley. This time I switched it out though and visited the location just b fore sunset, unlike the usual sunrise shot. Merced River had a decent water flow for this time of the year and there were a huge bunch of photographers setting up for sunset, we were planning on another location for sunset so it was a quick setup and shoot for me. I tried to get some foreground details in the picture to get some depth to the image but there is not much you need to do at this stunning location.

Thanks for visiting, hope you all like it..

Yosemite NP, Tioga Road, in the morning, Half Dome in the background

• Walt Whitman.

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Another shot from the Valley view location at Yosemite Valley. This shot was taken just minutes after I took the reflection shot which I posted earlier. As you can see the water flow has been increased and the wind picked up disturbing the calm water. I took this shot just to prominently focus on the cool foreground interests which were visible from this angle.

I didn't had much expectation with this trip to the Yosemite but me and my wife both enjoyed this visit immensely. First we stayed at Curry Village campground and living in a tent even if it’s for two days is a pleasantly surprising experience. This time we just drove around viewing all the amazing scenic points and it was a much more relaxing trip than the last time.

Shot from the Tunnel View

• Amelia Earhart.

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I read somewhere once that you can never take an attractive photo of a waterfall from top of it. Since i have read that every time I am at a waterfall I try too get a shot from top of every waterfall. This was a waterfall we found by the side of Rt 120 near Yosemite valley.I made this shot stitching 3 shots in a vertical panorama. I used the Big Stopper to get the water to slow down and cut most of the light off.

Thanks for visiting, hope you all like the image..

• Sun Tzu.

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This is one my absolute pictures of the trip. I saw this little swatch of meadows purely by accident, I have a strong hunch that this is the Dana-Gibbs view but I am not sure as there was no one else and I drove past it and had to return. I had all the time in the world to set up my tripod and compose my shot. Half way through setting up my picture my wife started pulling my shirt and we saw that there was a doe Mule deer carefully watching us. She slowly walked across the meadow from us and kept on grazing. This was almost a shot out of my dreams and I was just so happy. The only thing that would have been better is if I could take the shot before the deer walked far away but I am very satisfied with the results on this shot.

• Richard Wright.

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Hi All, I know I haven’t been posting many pictures lately due to a very busy schedule at work. But Hopefully I will get a break once this long release is over and I am planning on getting up to Yellowstone for this summer.

I found this one in the old collection of photos while I was doing my monthly backup. I am not sure how I missed this one. This was taken as part of our 2013 4th of July trip somewhere along the Tioga Pass road of Yosemite National Park. The cloud formations we encountered that day were nothing short of wonderful. And I took one of the best sunset shots I have ever taken, that day just as we reached Mono Lake. This scene was just a precursor to what was coming later.

Thanks for visiting, Have a great Monday..

Galen Rowell.

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I took this one while at the Tuolumne meadows at the first day of our Road trip on the 4th of July. Being a popular tourist destination and this day being the 4th the park was packed with tourists the whole day. But by the end of the day most tourists were gone but the meadows remain a popular destination. I was walking around trying to find a good foreground for the mountains below when I reached this spot. It is pretty wet grass and incredibly hard to get the tripod stable, but I finally managed and as I was taking the shot the Sun rays burst through the clouds and gave a nice dramatic sky. I tried to use the Big Stopper to slow the shutter speed down and get a bit of a movement in the clouds bud the sun was strong and I had some light leakage issues as I forgot to close the eyepiece down. But overall I am very satisfied by the image and hope you all like it. Thanks for visiting my stream..