Fresno County

Summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

― Henry James.

One of the challenges that I have faced as a landscape photographer is with conveying an experience. With the amount of time I have spent behind a lens, I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that I could take an excellent technical shot at almost any location. But it's far more challenging to convey what emotions a landscape stirred up correctly. Let me give you an example. All my life, I have been a fan of waterfalls, and one of the first techniques that I mastered as a photographer was to capture a silky-smooth and ethereal beauty of a cascading waterfall. But not all waterfalls are beautiful, some of them are just fun, and I have always struggled with conveying the fun element through my photos.

With that in mind, let's talk about the subject of today's post, Grizzly falls, a waterfall only a few steps away from the main park road that snakes alongside the Kings River at Kings Canyon National Park. The problem I had with this waterfall was the angle at which it twists, making it hard to make the falls beautiful in a picture as the foreground interest twist away from the main waterfall, making the classical waterfall shot almost impossible. But the three times I have visited the Park, I didn't stop at grizzly falls to admire the beauty of it but for the fact that it was a fun location. It's great to feel the mist from the fall on your face on a hot, dry summer day. So, after giving up on the classic waterfall shot, I tried to take a more lighthearted attempt. I use my iPhone X instead of my regular DSLR and tried an angle that emphasized the way the water was jetting out from the cliff. In turned out to be my favorite shot of this fun little waterfall.

During all these years there existed within me a tendency to follow Nature in her walks...

Kings Canyon View
by Sandeep Thomas

John James Audubon.

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When you combine travel with landscape photography, it often gives rise to interesting problems and opportunities. Half the fun is in coming up with solutions to a challenging situation. I have talked about some of the significant challenges that we have faced, but today I want to talk about a less challenging but a nagging issue that I have experienced. The fundamental differences between destinations on the east vs. west coast are accessibility. In the west coast, some of the more exotic destinations are quite a bit separated from the rest of the civilization.

I have noticed that every once in a while, we come across these spots that have fantastic potential but are awkwardly located, making them logistically challenging to match with a golden hour shoot during an extended road trip. An excellent example of this is McWay falls. The fall is located closer to the northern end of Big Sur, making it your first destination on a Big Sur trip from the Bay area. When coming from LA you often reach it way late. So, logistics wise it makes sense to make it a sunrise spot, but the entire falls are in the shadows during sunrise ruining any chance of a good shot. It took me six years to get the logistics right and get the sunset shot of McWay falls that I have always wanted.

Today’s spot is a similar location, which is located right before you enter the mighty Kings Canyon, National Park. Since the Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks are geographically challenging to reach, the only option to shoot this spot is by staying within the park or by starting your trip super early. Due to the lack of facilities, the accommodations inside the park gets booked up quite in advance, making it often very expensive as well. I am yet to manage a golden hour shoot here, but the view is just so majestic, I find myself returning to this stunning location every time we come this way.