Photoblog 2.0

Morning along the Merced, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a photograph of morning along the Merced River in Yosemite Valley from February, 2006. I’ve just gotten around to post-processing it now.

Morning comes late to Yosemite Valley because of the high rock walls. When the light does shine through, it is spectacular and beautiful, with trees, water, and rocks beginning to glow each at their own time.

This photo looks like spring is just around the corner. Who was to say that it would blizzard the next day?

Yosemite Valley from Inspiration Point Trail, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

For my 800th Photoblog 2.0 story I embedded 800 in Roman numerals in an image, and offered a print of the image of the winner’s choice as a prize to the first person to correctly spot the Easter egg.

Unfortunately, I got my Roman numerals wrong, but that’s another story.

Aaron was the winner. Here’s what he wrote me about why he chose this image:

I thought I would just let you know why it is that I picked the print I did. First of all, I really enjoy the colors in the scene, and I like the huge depth of field you have captured. I also like the quality of light in general. But the think I like most about it is the feeling that I get when I look around at the scene. With the bush in the foreground the scene to me makes me feel like I have just hiked up to this point and I am emerging from the forest to see the whole valley open up before me. It is a moment of discovery and of adventure and of grandeur as I take in the vast landscape before me. And that is a glorious moment.

Gee! I’m blushing. Thanks, Aaron for the kind words, and enjoy your print.

Related story: Naming the Wilderness.

Mountains of the Mind, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

On the kids and my last day in Yosemite, of course it rained. High up above the valley floor it was snowing.

Mostly we did indoor things. We rode the shuttle bus, and thoroughly explored the Ahwanee Hotel.

But as I looked around I found the clouds on the waterfalls, cliffs, and walls very interesting. I exposed this view of the Cathedral Spires, and post-processed it, with Chinese landscape painting somewhat in mind.

Related story: Magic Portals (Cathedral Spires from the other direction).

Bridalveil Falls Rainbow, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I’d positively expect to see a rainbow when hiking the Mist Trail to Vernal Falls. It is not at all unusual to see a rainbow from the spray in Nevada Falls or Yosemite Falls. But I’ve never seen a rainbow in Bridalveil Falls before.

The kids and I were hiking on the old Inspiration Point trail above Tunnel View. On our way down, I looked across the valley and saw this Bridalveil Falls rainbow.

I quickly screwed my polarizer on the end of the lens to heighten the rainbow effect and render the colors more deeply saturated. I snapped a few captures, and then the rainbow was gone.

Kids in Yosemite, photo by Harold Davis.

This photo shows Nicky and Julian on the so-called Swinging Bridge (it doesn’t really swing anymore although maybe a predecessor bridge once did) with Yosemite Falls in the background.

For me, showing the kids Yosemite Valley was really fun but tiring. It was hard to get too much serious photography done with a five year old and a nine year old to tend. My least favorite things:

• Waiting for line on food, like the time I was trying to get lunch for the kids and the Japanese tour group ahead of me ordered thirty-five cheese burgers.
• All the people insisting on yammering on their cell phones, even on a wilderness trail. Can you imagine? What’s the point of being there if you are going to be tethered by your mobile devices?

The kids loved Yosemite Valley, it is a natural playground. Their favorite activities (probably in order):

• Snowball fights (these were near Crane Flat above the valley)
• Playing on the beach at Mirror Lake
• Climbing rocks
• Riding the shuttle bus
• Exploring the Ahwanee Hotel looking for secret passages
• Hiking the Mist Trail

The kids’ least favorite things about visiting Yosemite:

• (Julian) “We didn’t get far enough hiking the Mist Trail.” (But Julian, Nicky’s only five and he went as far as his little legs could take him!)
• (Nicky) “I was afraid a bear would come into our tent.” (Nicky, it wasn’t a bear, it was only Daddy!)

Night in Yosemite, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a view from the meadow outside Curry Village in Yosemite. It is looking up at Glacier Point.

It’s a longer exposure than Yosemite Falls at Dusk: Five Minutes (300 seconds) with the lens wide open. Long enough to see the motion of the stars.

I had helped Julian and Nicky brush their teeth, and read them Harry Potter. With a certain amount of nervousness, I had left the kids asleep in our tent at Curry, strapped on my camera pack, tripod, and headlamp, and headed out into the dark.

Each exposure seemed to take forever, particularly since the processing of these long exposure, high noise images took a long time, even after the shutter had closed.

I was torn between wanting to get “just another exposure” to increase the odds of even one exposure coming out, and worry that the kids might not be OK.

In this capture, the light is peculiar, and there are a couple of strange artifacts. The line of lights on the left in the sky was a slow-moving airplane. Glacier Point itself was lit from a number of low-light sources: star light, and once someone’s flashlight.

Then again, there was a good bit of ambient light pollution: bright Yosemite Valley shuttle buses, headlights from passing cars, a fellow night stroller out with a bright lantern, and light from the Curry buildings. Each time a car passed away to the right I did my best to shield the exposing camera from stray light. At the same time, these light sources lit Glacier Point itself with weird colors piercing through the trees.

Packing up, I returned to our tent. Nicky opened his eyes briefly. “Daddy,” he said, “You’re not a bear.” Then I heard his steady breathing.

Yosemite Falls at Dusk, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is Upper Yosemite Falls photographed at dusk, basically by star light, from near Sentinel Bridge. I purposely stopped the lens down as far as possible to make the exposure as long as possible, so that the water would hopefully become a solid flow. The final exposure: three minutes (180 seconds) at f/22.

Dawn Reflections in the Merced, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Photography is poetry. A movie is a story, but a photograph is a poem.

Robert Frost is not ee cumming is not Andrew Marvell. Just so: Henri Cartier-Bresson isn’t Ansel Adams or Galen Rowell.

What kind of poem is my photograph of dawn reflected in the Merced River in Yosemite Valley’s winter?

Golden Wonder, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

I took this photo in Yosemite Valley in very early morning from Leidig Meadow looking northeast towards Middle Brother (shown here from the other side on a clear autumn afternoon) while Julian played in the snow. If you look carefully at the trees on the rock face of Middle Brother, you’ll recognize them in this photo and this photo:

View this image larger.

My title for my image, Golden Wonder, is from an Ansel Adams quote: “Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.”

I post-processed this image from Camera RAW using my normal workflow to reduce noise and selectively enhance luminance and radiance (this story will give you an idea of what I mean by enhancing radiance).

I hope at some point to publish a case study showing the exact steps I use to process an image such as this one.

Morning in Yosemite, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is a photo of early morning in Yosemite Valley from Leidig Meadow looking towards Cathedral Rock and Spires on my February visit with Julian.

It is also the eight hundredth entry in my Photoblog 2.0. So here’s an Easter Egg for you: Somewhere in this image is 800 (not 300, 800!). The first reader of Photoblog 2.0 who contacts me with the location and form of the 800 in the image gets a free signed, archival 8X10″ Harold Davis print (value $150). (Image to be chosen by the winner.)

Hints: Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. And not all numerals are Arabic.

In the beginning: Ducks (May 6, 2005).

Update: anystrom (see comment) has found the correct answr, and this contest is closed. Congratulations, anystrom, and what great eye sight!

Island in the Sun, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Dawn comes to Yosemite Valley. In the fog of a snowy winter day, only one peak is lit by the early morning rays: an island in the sun.

Snow Crystals, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Overnight in Yosemite, snow froze on trees and plants in weird crystal-like formations. When dawn came, the sun first touched the tops of the cliffs, then headed down into Yosemite Valley. As the sun started to warm the valley, and Julian played in the snow, I photographed this snow-and-crystal covered plant in Leidig Meadow.

Snow on Pine, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

In the early morning of Yosemite winter as Julian and I explored the valley, snow crystals hung on the branches of the trees, bending the branches towards the earth.

Julian along the Merced, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Julian came with me to Yosemite, played in the snow, and woke me every morning so I could be sure to photograph dawn.

He had, I think, a very good and special time, although the immensity and ferocity of the winter landscape sometimes gave this child of California pause. What did he do while I was engrossed in photographing the Merced River or some other heroic landscape? He built ice castles by the banks of the Merced River, and enjoyed snowballs!

Winter Afternoon in Yosemite, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Like Snowstorm in Yosemite, I took this photo from Tunnel View on a recent winter’s afternoon in Yosemite (this image follows Snowstorm in Yosemite by a day). The greatest challenge in taking this photo was finding a space between the tripods and lens shades belonging to nature’s paparazzi.

Both Snowstorm in Yosemite and this photo of a winter afternoon in Yosemite are, of course, quite compositionally close to Ansel Adams’s famous Clearing Winter Storm.