This is one of my favorite places to visit. Living in the San Francisco Bay area, I am lucky that California has NINE national parks. Best of all, Yosemite national park is only about three and half hours from home so its close enough to go up and back in the same day if I want.
HI I’m Terry VanderHeiden, and welcome to The Nature Photography Podcast. In this episode we are going to talk about one my personal favorites, Yosemite National park
Yosemite was established in 1864 when Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite grant to protect the park set in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. This is an incredibly popular national park that attracts some 4 million visitors each year. This was the first public land that was deemed protected by the federal government and paved the way to Yellowstone becoming the first national park in 1872.
While it was protected in 1864 it wasn’t until 1903 that naturalist, John Muir, took then president ,Theodore Roosevelt on a camping trip to Yosemite. This trip persuaded the president to bring Yosemite into the fold and brought it under the umbrella as a National Park. Finally becoming official when the National Park service was formed in 1916.
When you enter the park from the west, you have a couple of options, highway 120 is most direct route from San Francisco, or you can take 140 from Merced or 41 up from Fresno. Today we took highway 140 as I think it’s an easier drive and very scenic.
When you come into the park, you drive down into Yosemite Valley. This is essentially a loop that will take you to the end of the valley then it gradually turns you around and you can head back to the beginning of the loop. So the first part of the loop is the south side of the Valley, while the other side is the North side of the valley. These roads are separated by meadows and trees and occasionally a few curios visitors.
My first recommendation is to take 41 to Glacier Point and make your first turn off, the parking lot of “tunnel view”. This gives you a spectacular view of Yosemite valley – where everything is laid out in front of you.
As you stand on this popular overlook, you will have the awe inspiring El Capitan on the left. El Cap is a granite rock formation that is about 3000 feet tall. Its sheer vertical walls make it a favorite place for rock climbers to scale each year.
Near the center of your view you will have Half Dome in the distance and then valley is framed by the fragilely appearing Bridalveil falls on the right.
From this angle you will have the setting sun at your back and sometimes storm clouds will boil in the sky in the background. You can’t go wrong getting a good overall shot of the valley. This is also a great place to create a panoramic image.
To create a panoramic image, put on a lens that is about 50 to 100 millimeters using one of todays digital cameras. Then set your camera up on a tripod, making sure to set your camera in the vertical position. Set up your tripod legs to make a level platform for the camera and shoot from left to right. Over lapping each image by about a quarter of the frame.
When you are shooting a pano, move quickly so that if you have clouds in the sky, they don’t move too much between images to lesson some of the work you may have to do in post processing.
As you move your camera across the horizon line, you will end with Bridalviel falls on the right side of the valley. Here, you may want to be using an exposure that will blur that water so consider that before you start to keep all your exposures the same .
When you come out that parking lot you will have a two choices of what you may want to see next, depending on the time of year you go to Yosemite.
If you take a right, you can take the 45 minute drive up to Glacier Point to see some fantastic views and an almost a close up angle of Half Dome. This road is only available in the summer and fall seasons, as they close it on the first snow of the year.
This you can elevate your photography here at sunset, since the sun will light up the face of half dome as it sets. Making for some spectacular photographic opportunities.
If you take a left out of the parking lot of tunnel view, you can go back down the hill into the valley. As your drive slowly around, you will have a lot of options. First on the right will be the parking lot access to the hike up to Bridalveil falls. This location has a fair amount of parking and is a pretty easy hike with camera gear up to the base of the falls.
Bridalveil falls is a modest 620 foot plunge down the vertical granite wall. Normally these falls are flowing all year long with, of course, the largest capacity surging in the spring time.
You can find lots of different angles as you shoot the falls. There are many opportunities to shoot slow shutter speed shots to blur the water, as long as you remember to bring your Neutral Density filters.
As you leave the falls parking lot, you will have only one option and that is turn right and remain on the one-way road traveling the south side of the valley.
Now that you have shot in at least two locations by now, you hopefully will have noticed something. Most everything you have shot are neutral colors.
White waterfalls, gray granite and dark, contrasty shadows. This is one of the reasons, Yosemite is one of the best places to photograph in black and white.
While it’s not to say you can’t create some beautiful color images, because you certainly can, but this is a great place to try out your skills in photographing in black and white.
The light in the high sierras where Yosemite Valley resides, comes with crystalline air and very contrasty light. Where this may make your color images a bit harsh, switch to black and white and you can make some phenomenal captures.
After all, this national park was put on the map, essentially, by one man’s black and white images. None other than Ansel Adams.
After the break, we’ll talk more about Ansel Adams and the endless possibilities of black and white photography in Yosemite.
Ansel Adams started photographing Yosemite almost 100 years ago. It was in 1927 that he captured the famous image, “Monolith, the Face of Half Dome”,
The shot is of the face of half dome in the snow, catapulted him and this new national park, into the international spotlight.
Today as photographers we can retrace his steps in Yosemite and attempt to view some of his subjects, in our own way. We can use our modern equipment to create some spectacular black and white images.
Ansel Adams created a system by which black and white photography was measured, it was called the zone system. Since Adams shot with a view camera, one image at a time, he was able to shoot an image with a certain exposure and then go back to the darkroom and process that image precisely how he wanted to, based on how he exposed that one sheet of film.
The idea he worked with was this term: “Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights”. This meant that when he was shooting, he made sure that his shadows would have detail, then in processing, he could make sure that the highlights would also have detail.
His zone system divided each image into zones of gray. Using roman numerals, he would define a gray tone for each numbered zone. Zero though 10. There were nine zones that had detail, and zone zero was absolute black and zone 10 was absolute white.
While Ansel Adams worked to always have some detail in the shadows and some detail in the highlights avoiding absolute black and absolute white, he didn’t have the technology we have today, so let’s use it to our advantage.
Today with modern digital photography, we can have a tremendous amount of latitude over our images, especially if we can shoot in HDR mode. High Dynamic Range.
If you don’t know, HDR mode allows us to shoot the same image with varying degrees of exposure and then digitally we are able to sandwich them together and create an image with detail in the blacks and detail in the highlights even in the contrasty light of Yosemite Valley.
To do this type of shooting, set your camera on auto bracketing. Most cameras have this feature and it allows you shoot the same image with three different exposures. One, right on your exposure, then one a couple of stops over exposure, and one a couple of stops under exposure.
When I am shooting HDR, I will usually use three exposures, but cameras are built today that will allow up to 7 exposures in this auto bracket mode. Seven exposures appears to me to be overkill. You can preset how many stops under and over you want. I have mostly found that two stops over and two stops under works pretty well.
With this setting, I just hold down the shutter and three shots fire off, changing the shutter speed on each one to compensate for the difference in exposure.
It is best to use a tripod for this type of shooting since it will be easier to keep everything aligned. I also use a cable release or a remote shutter release to make sure I’m not moving the camera during the three exposures.
The processing is pretty easy out of lightroom, just select the three images in the series and right click and use the menu to select HDR, the software will stack these images and take the best of each one and build you an image with a tremendous amount of dynamic range. Lots of latitude to slider up the shadows and bring down the highlights.
Back to our tour of Yosemite Valley. As you leave Bridalveil falls area, you are still on the south side of the valley. You will come across meadows and other beautiful views. Off to the left you should start to see some views of Yosemite falls.
Yosemite falls is one of the tallest waterfalls in North America and certainly the highest water fall in the park. At more than 2400 feet it cascades down a sheer granite face and is actually made up of three sections.
The key to seeing Yosemite falls in all its spender, is to go see it in late spring. That is when the snow melt is churning and the water fall is at full capacity.
Come fall and into winter, the falls appear to be just a dribble as all the water at the top is all but drained out by then.
If you are a hiking type, plan on an overnight hike up the Yosemite falls trail, to the top of Yosemite falls. While it can take 6 to 10 hours to get up there, the trek including an overnight, is the way to go.
There is a camping area up there and not only do you not have to hike down in the dark, you can wake up at dawn and get one of the most spectacular view of sunrise in the valley, by looking out over the top of Yosemite falls.
If you do decide to camp up there, be sure to follow all the park rules of getting overnight passes and be prepared for some thirsty mosquitos and hungry black bears.
That just means to pre-spray your clothing with something like permethrin spray. This works pretty well at keeping the mosquitos bothering someone else.
Its mandatory in Yosemite to keep your back country food, in a bear proof canister.
The bears have figured out mostly how to get food that is hung in trees, where even if they get hold of your canister, they can’t open it. They end up just banging it around a bit and then they move on.
Traveling along, still on the south side of the valley floor, you will get some good views of half dome framed by trees and reflecting in the Merced river. Look for Sentinel Bridge, as it’s a very popular spot to photograph half dome.
At the end where you are forced to take the turn to head back on the looped road, here you can park and take a short hike to Mirror lake, which has decreased in size since the first time I visited Yosemite. But, It’s still worth the easy walk to the lake to make some images.
Photographed in Yosemite Valley
It is this area that you can park and hike the famous Mist trail up to two popular waterfalls. The first you will come across is Vernal falls – about a 3 mile round trip hike. If you want to extend your hike, you can do the 7 mile round trip hike to Nevada Falls.
Both of these are usually roaring in the spring and summer and are great to photograph.
The mist trail is aptly named as the falls along the way will create a liquid layer over you and your equipment. So be prepared to get wet. Refreshingly so in the summer time, but this could get you pretty cold in the spring if you have cool weather.
If you are looking for the waterfalls, skip this hike anytime after August as the snow melt can be finished by then and the falls have tapered off to just about nothing.
As you make your turn at the end of the road, you will be heading back to the west, but this time you will be on the north side of the valley. On the right you will see signs for lodging, the shopping center and places to eat.
Also in this area is the Ansel Adams gallery. This is a great place to go to get inspired by some of his images. These images were shot in the 1930s to 1960’s and they still stand the test of time. This is worth checking out.
Traveling west on the north side of the valley, keep a look out for Coyotes, Mule deer and black bears. These can all be seen out in the meadows and along the tree line.
This road will end up right where you started and you can do the loop all over again.
What is the best season to visit Yosemite?
Depending on your needs and what you want to see will depend on the season that you visit.
Summer is the most popular, most of those 4 million visitors go between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Its popular because the air is warm, the nights are cool, the waterfalls are booming, all the wildlife is out and all the park services are running. If you don’t mind people, this is a great time to go.
Spring is the next time to go, less people but if you catch it right, the waterfalls are going pretty well and getting a campsite or wilderness pass is attainable.
Fall is also a great time to go. Just so you know, fall in California comes in about late October and early November. The nights are cold but the trees along the valley that do change color are vibrant yellow by then. Not much in the way of water flowing but that can be a plus as you can make your way out into rivers and streams without the worry of being swept away by the current. There is also, way less people.
The hidden gem in Yosemite Valley is the winter. There are very few people, in comparison to the more popular seasons. While there are fewer services, such as the frequent trams of the spring and summer, the valley is covered in snow and is a site that has to be seen.
Keep in mind that Yosemite National Park is best photographed at sunset. Which means you don’t have to get there at dawn to get some great images. The downside to that is that most of the key locations are best shot at sunset. So, you may have to plan a few days in the valley to get everything you want.
Go check out this fantastic National park in California and you won’t be disappointed.
Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast with your photographer and nature loving friends. Until next time, this is Terry VanderHeiden with the Nature Photography Podcast.
