About the Image(s)

April in Yosemite

I just got back from four days in Yosemite National Park. If you have been there, you know what a photographer’s dream this place is. It is nothing short of a sacred cathedral of granite with waterfalls gushing in spring and glorious fall color in autumn. If you haven’t been there, you must go. It will be both an exhilarating and humbling experience.

Just don’t go in the summertime. Yosemite is heavily impacted at that time of the year with throngs of people from all over the world. A reservation system is in place during heavily visited times. I went this spring in a workshop led by Gary Hart, an exceptional California-based landscape photographer. I also attended his fall workshop in Yosemite a number of years ago. If you want to get the most out of your experience, I can’t recommend him highly enough as a workshop leader who has been exploring Yosemite his entire life. And, no, he didn’t pay me to write this. He’s as good an educator as he is a photographer. Enough said.

On the last night of our workshop, we set up our gear in the evening along the Merced River with a fabulous view of Half Dome in the background. In the bottom right of this scene, you can see telltale signs of one of the campgrounds. Occasionally someone would walk out onto the beach. People in my landscape photos don’t bother me. Sometimes they help to provide perspective and can help tell a story about humans interacting with their environment.

On my tripod, I set up my Canon 5D Mark IV with a Canon 16??”35 mm lens @ 34 mm and a polarizer. Exposure info: ISO 50, f/11, 2 seconds. Post processing in Adobe Camera Raw: profile set to camera matching landscape. Since this photo was taken just as the sun was setting through a cloudy sky, I added a full stop of exposure. Highlights all the way down, shadows all the way up, White point: -100, Black point -53, slight bit of contrast added. Color adjustments: temperature: 7500, vibrance +21, saturation +5. Effects: texture +11, clarity +8, dehaze -3. Curve adjustments: lights -13, darks +17, shadows +23.

I have yet to go to Yosemite in winter. But I’ve certainly seen some awesome photographs by the likes of professional photographers Michael Frye and William Neil taken at that time of the year. By the way, a visit to the Ansel Adams gallery is certainly worth a stop. We went there before leaving the park just as a thunderstorm moved in and filled the sky with more dramatic imagery just waiting to be captured.