Yosemite Valley

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

• 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

• 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.

• 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.

Half Dome sunset panorama in Yosemite National Park

Wildfire caused smoke fog over Yosemite National Park. Famous Bridal Vein Falls was invisible because of drought.

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..

• 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..

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• 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.

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.

• 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)

• 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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• 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.

Shot from the Tunnel View

• John James Audubon.

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If I have to pick one viewpoint in all of Yosemite National Park, I will pick the Valley View viewpoint to emphasize the grandness of the Yosemite Valley. To me, the view from the valley floor with the majestic El Capitan and the Cathedral Rocks anchoring the composition on both sides with the Merced River as foreground interest tells the story of Yosemite Valley better than any other viewpoint.

Over the years, I have taken many images from this location, but we had overcast conditions on this trip, so I had to try something new. I decided to limit the sky in my composition to a minimum and focus more on the Merced River. I had to experiment a bit with the angling of the camera to include more of a mid-ground and making sure I had edge-to-edge focus. Thankfully it all come together in the end.

• John Muir.

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• Leonardo da Vinci.

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Yosemite valley, so far, has been one of my favorite places on the west coast. But I have had very little luck with conditions every time we visited the valley. Due to the location of the valley, smack in the middle of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the sky tends to be either plain or windy with choke-full of clouds. The first time we visited was immediately after our move to San Francisco, and to be brutally honest, the trip generated only two images that truly stood out.

The second time we visited, timed perfectly with a storm that passed through the valley. We saw clouds piling into the valley as we were shooting the sunset at tunnel view. So we didn’t have much hope for the rest of the weekend, but we decided to soldier on with our plan. We had planned the Valley view photo for the evening, but a very overcast sky and pretty drab conditions greeted us at this classic location. I have about 40 shots here where I persisted with my original plan.

But after a while, I got frustrated with the results and started to think about the conditions. I noticed that both the river and the clouds were moving fast due to the windy conditions. Thankfully I had enough experience with the Lee Big Stopper to know what conditions suit the particular filter. I loved the golden color of the long grass and the contrast it made with the steel blue-grey ambient light. The 10-stop ND filter also helped me bring out some of the details in the movements of the clouds. Changing the type of photography according to the conditions helped me create a decent photograph even in pretty drab conditions.

• John Muir.

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Valley View at Yosemite National Park, CA. We visited Yosemite valley last weekend on a two day trip and was rewarded with some stunning sights and vistas all around this amazing natural wonder. I have been planning this trip since I moved to the USA and finally after 6 years in the east coast when I finally moved to San Francisco I wanted to make this trip as soon as possible. Finally we made the time for the trip and even though most of the park is closed for winter the valley was open and we thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Thanks for visiting more pics to follow..

• Plato.

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One of the main challenges of planning a trip to Yosemite Valley is efficiently managing your time to cover the multitude of photo opportunities at this park. You have this fear of missing out while at already famous and well-established locations. I have always felt that every single viewpoint of the valley deserves the best possible light. The problem with the best light approach is that you will probably need a year to cover all the excellent photographic opportunities at Yosemite. Plus, Yosemite Valley is one place where the mood and beauty of a location drastically change in different weather conditions. Every time you visit, it is not easy to forego a site you already photographed instead of something new.

Hanging Valley viewpoint is a location that has the unfortunate luck of being close to Valley view. Often photographers pass this viewpoint in their hurry to get to the valley view and secure a parking spot. Also, the parking lot for this spot is tiny. Another trouble is Yosemite’s one-way traffic policy making it almost impossible to get to this location after shooting sunrise at valley view as you will have to complete the whole drive to get back here.

During our visit to the valley in the winter of 2015, I managed to secure a parking spot at the Hanging Valley viewpoint just before the sunset. The light had some great warm tones, and the Cathedral Rocks were being spot lighted with the best kind of side lighting. I included the Merced river as the foreground for the image and took a quick panorama image of the mountain peaks. As luck would have it, some low-lying clouds in front of the rock cliff give the picture a little x-factor along with the golden light.

• William Cowper.

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This shot was taken little later in the morning from the swinging bridge location at Yosemite Valley. I was actually pretty surprised when we reached here as the Merced River was so serene and reflecting the mountains perfectly. I usually never find perfect reflections, I mean seriously in all my photography trips I have only got a perfect reflection once before, so seeing in two different locations on the same day was awesome.

This one is another stitch panorama shot combining roughly around 15 images taken using the Nikkor 24-70 2.8 and Nikon D800. Thanks for visiting, Hope you all have a good day..