Yosemite National Park, Twilight and Night
“...full of God's thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the most
exalted grandeur and enthusiastic action, a new song, a place of
beginnings abounding in first lessons of life, mountain building,
eternal, invincible, unbreakable order; with sermons in stone, storms,
trees, flowers, and animals brimful with humanity.”
-John Muir
The following photos were taken from late afternoon into nightfall.
Tunnel View. Looking down the Yosemite Valley floor from the Tunnel View
lookout point.To the very left is El Capitan, the valley floor,
followed by Half Dome in the distance. To the right is Cathedral Rocks.
The waterfall below them is Bridalveil Falls.
A lesson in being aware of your surroundings: I was all set up for taking the photograph below. The legs of my tripod were splayed out, camera mounted and focused for the photo I wished to capture. All that was needed was to wait for the natural phenomenon to appear... or maybe not. Nature is fickle.
Standing there, waiting and talking to other photographers also set up for the spectacle, most of us were oblivious to the large moon rising over Sentinel Peak directly opposite of our collective attention. Someone in the crowd suggested we all look behind us. We did, and were rewarded with the vision of a large, gorgeous moon cresting the top of the peak. We immediately readjusted our tripods and cameras to capture the surprise behind us, and then reset our equipment to accomplish what all of us originally gathered there for, the naturally occurring Firefall of Horsetail Fall. Talk and conversation resumed, we waited for the phenomenon to occur, and all were amply rewarded that dusk with an incredible spectacle.
The moral of the story (if there is one)? Always be aware of your surroundings, for invariably you will be rewarded with surprises when practicing due diligence. The rising moon shot isn't a gallery quality photograph by any means, but nonetheless, experiencing it was extremely rewarding and we walked away with yet another keeper for our photo archives.
Horsetail Fall. A phenomenon that only manifests itself in the winter, Horsetail Fall transforms into a fiery-colored plume of water, more commonly known as the
Firefall.
This is not to be confused with the old "fire fall" of yesteryear that was put on by the park rangers, and visible from Camp Curry on warm, summer nights. That ceased around 1968 when conservation concerns came to the forefront regarding bulldozing large quantities of live fire and embers over Glacier Point into the valley floor below.
As a kid camping with my parents in Camp Curry, we sat around a large campfire with one of the rangers who spun tales and educated us on Yosemite flora, fauna, history and lore. As the evening wound down, we were instructed to look up to the tippy-top of Glacier Point and get ready for an event of a lifetime. It was then that a dozer would push a huge pile of fire and embers over the side, much to the delight of we onlookers in camp. It truly was spectacular to witness!
But that is not the same as what is referred today as the Yosemite Firefall. In order for it to appear, certain criteria have to be met. It happens only in the winter, February being the optimal month, with a fair amount of water flowing down Horsetail Fall. During some years there isn't enough snow melt to cause Horsetail Fall to cascade, so the show doesn't go on. Also, there can't be any clouds to the west to block the sunset rays from transforming water to fire. The transformation takes place when light rays from the setting sun arc over the mountains at a specific angle to light up the backside of the fall as it cascades down the face of El Capitan.
This is not a "Photoshopped" picture in the sense of putting lipstick on a pig. God naturally applied makeup to the scene. The only work performed on it was transforming it from a RAW to a TIFF file, adjusting the contrast through curves, bumping up the saturation a bit to what I remember the fall being, as RAW files can be rather flat, and then sharpened it. The TIFF was then re-saved as a JPG for posting.
Some other photographers I was with shot it again the following sunset while I went to Tunnel View. The intense color they came back with was literally unbelievable. It was so red, it looked like molten lava. If I didn't know them personally in the collective, I would have had serious doubts as to the authenticity of the colors they captured.
Yosemite Falls. The highest measured fall in North America at 2,425 feet. Taken at night from the Yosemite Valley below. The shutter was set to stay open for 30 seconds in order to capture enough light to render the photo. If one looks closely, it becomes evident that the earth turned ever so slightly on its axis, causing the stars to shift and create smears.
That's it for Yosemite. The last and final destination we will head out to is Zion National Park in Utah.
