Clearing Storm, Yosemite Valley

As I've said before, some times you just get lucky. I was in Yosemite for a wet weekend when I stopped at the famous, iconic Tunnel View with no real intention of getting a decent photograph of the valley. And yet . . . The ugly weather started clearing right before my eyes. Another good bit of timing was how the rainy weather had recharged Bridalveil Falls so that it was flowing enough to reflect the light and act as a kind of anchor for the otherwise shadowy right side of the picture. As I immediately recognized whiffs of Ansel Adams' famous "Clearing Winter Storm" shot, oh, about 80 years before, I decided to crank up the resolution by shooting this as a panorama, which worked out to be about eight vertical pictures stitched together in Photoshop. As a further homage to the master, I converted it to black and white with a slight selenium tone. The detail is pretty amazing and one could be forgiven for thinking this was shot on large format film. It looks that good in person.

Canon 5D, 28-70mm lens set to 48mm, 1/100, f/8 at ISO 100, Gitzo tripod with Kirk ballhead

Dewey Point, Yosemite

This is an example of having a wonderful scene but just not getting the photograph right technically. My wife, Gloria, and I had snowshoed out from Badger Pass in Yosemite National Park to Dewey Point in fresh snow from the night before. Above the Point, which was around the corner from our tent site, we hunkered down for the cold night but then I got restless and realized I needed to take a shot of our tent in the moonlight. I can't tell you how hard it is to wiggle out of a warm sleeping bag, put on a parka and boots, and then leave for the freezing night air. No, I'm not trying to demonstrate how dedicated I am . . . okay, maybe I am. In any event, I had figured I might try this composition the day before when I was packing and so I brought a flash and wireless trigger for it. Unfortunately, with Gloria holding the flash inside the tent, the signal from my camera to the trigger just wasn't getting through (or maybe it was too cold). We fiddled with it for awhile and decided that wasn't going to work. So next we got out Gloria's Canon Rebel and put my flash on it. Each time I took a picture with a fairly long exposure, I called her to take a picture inside the tent. First, she pointed the camera toward me but that was way too bright. In fact, we couldn't get the right balance of light and dark with my big, honkin' flash, so tried the pop-up flash on her camera. She pointed it in different directions and finally we nailed it when she directed the flash away from me. I don't know—I probably took 20 or 30 frames during this exercise. Strangely, while we were working out the picture, I didn't feel cold once.
Canon 5DMII, 15-35mm lens set to 23mm, 90 seconds at f/8, ISO 800.

Dewey Point

There's an online magazine I admire called PHOTOGRAPH which is published quarterly by David duChemin who happens to be a photographer I also admire. This magazine takes advantage of the fact that, being in the pdf format, it can pretty much publish as many photographs as it wants and not really have to worry about production costs (okay, having done my share of layout and design over the years, I know that's a production cost, too, but I'm talking about printing up an expensive truckload of magazines not knowing if they'll all sell or not). So, it's a beautiful publication that really shows the breadth of its featured photographers' work.

Therefore, I was delighted to learn a photograph of mine is being featured in the latest issue, #8, in what they're calling the "Final Frame" (the second-to-last page). Here's a link to the magazine. It costs eight bucks, by the way.
http://craftandvision.com/collections/photograph

As for the picture itself, I took it at Dewey Point in Yosemite on a cold winter evening. Gloria and I had backpacked into this spot on snowshoes after a heavy snowfall, and were set up about a hundred feet from where I stood to take this shot. I have to admit I wasn't especially motivated to leave the semi-warm tent to go out as the sun was setting. In fact, I was lightly snoozing when Gloria pointed out that the sun was setting fast and there was color in the sky. I guess the thing about photography is there are times when the desire to potentially do something special runs up against the competing desire to be comfortable, and it takes a little effort and self-bullying to run out into the sub-freezing air just for a stupid picture. Of course, I managed to shame myself into wiggling out of my sleeping bag, put on my down parka, strap on my snowshoes and trudge out to the Point. And there was this magnificent sunset, made more special by how the light and dark clouds were framing these trees on the ridge top. For anyone who cares, it was shot with a Canon 5D MII, 28-70mm lens set at 70mm, f/9.5 and a shutter speed of 1/90. The camera was on a Gitzo tripod.

I also included a few other shots from the trip, just to show how incredibly beautiful the Yosemite high country is in the winter and well worth the effort to get out there, even if you have to freeze your ass off to do so.

Sunset, Dewey Point

Summit Meadow

Our camp under the light of the full moon.

El Capitan from Dewey Point.

Gloria and me on Dewey Point.