Good reading!

Check the articles from the good folks at www.lensrentals.com (you can access via their RSS feed at http://www.lensrentals.com/feed/news.xml). I've found their articles informative and interesting and cover a wide range of subjects.

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Enjoy!

Warner Park Wildflowers

Bloodroot bloom, Edwin Warner Park, 22 March, 2009

The weather is turning more Spring-like with each week and this past week-end (22 March) I ventured over to Edwin Warner Park to see how the wildflowers were progressing. It still seemed early as daffodils are in full bloom and the bluebells are just starting to peek out.  I did find a couple of interesting subjects including this bloodroot bloom along the road to Bluebell Bend. I also spotted a couple of snakes sunning themselves along the rock walls, but they would scoot before I had a chance to get set for any kind of shot.  Another week and the bluebells should be in full bloom.

Yosemite National Park

Sunrise at Valley View, Yosemite National Park

Click here to see my photos from Yosemite, February 2009.

This is my account of a recent trip to Yosemite National Park to try and photograph the "firefall".  If you're not familiar with this phenomenon, it is a brief period of time (late February) when Horsetail Falls flowing off of El Capitan becomes backlit by the setting sun. Here's an article that describes the phenomenon in detail: www.michaelfrye.com/articles/horsetail.html 

A friend of mine and co-worker, Mike Auer accompanied me. It turns out that Mike is an aspiring film maker and wanted to get some good video shots of famous outdoor icons. In addition Mike is an avid outdoors guy and I've enjoyed many discussions with him about backpacking, hiking, bicycling, etc. 

 

We flew out of Nashville on Thursday, February 19th and were meeting up with my brother, Tom in Sacramento. We flew through Ontario, California and kudos to Southwest for getting us on an earlier flight to Sacramento. When we got to Ontario our original flight had been delayed for a couple of hours. We spent the night at Tom's house and then headed to Yosemite on Friday morning. I was anxious to get to Yosemite as the weather, while sunny on Friday, was forecasted to deteroriate over the week-end meaning the chances of good light at sunset would diminish.

After a quick visit with my sister, Elinor, over morning coffee we headed to Yosemite and made it to the park about 3:30p. We took the quick route to Yosemite via Highways 99 and 120.  Highway 49 is much more scenic but can be quite a bit slower with its numerous 2-lane sections and lots of twists and turns.  We checked into our hotel (the Yosemite View Lodge) which is just south of the park in El Portal. We headed back to the park to scout the prescribed location for photographing the firefall - the El Capitan picnic area off of Northside Drive. To my amazement there were about 40-50 cars parked at the picnic area and at least 75 photographers staked out around the vicinity. 

We found a spot with a decent view and set up, but our hopes were dwindling as late afternoon clouds were blocking the late sunlight. There was a decent amount of water coming over the falls as there had been a major snow storm earlier in the week.  There was about two feet of snow in the valley. We waited out the sunrise, but unfortunately no color, but we enjoyed the party-like atmosphere among the photographers at the picnic area.  We drove to the Awanhee Hotel and celebrated being in Yosemite with a beer and formulated some plans for Saturday. 

We made an earlier night after dinner at the hotel and got up with plans to catch the sunrise at Valley View in the park. I knew this was a busy week-end for photography in the park as I had read of numerous photo workshops and groups being in the park - all probably with the main intention of photographing the firefall. There was a bit of light and color at sunrise and we were joined by 20-30 photographers along the bank of the Merced River trying to capture the view of El Capitan and Cathedral Rocks in the morning light. After the sunrise we headed to the Swinging Bridge area and there were a couple of interesting subjects there. Some small, bare trees covered with frost and ice formations along the river's edge kept me occupied. We joined the late breakfast crowd at Yosemite Lodge for some breakfast and then headed to Yosemite Falls. The upper falls had some nice ice formations on the rock due to the spray freezing on the rock, but it had clouded up again and everything was a shade of gray. I really didn't find much inspiration (photographically) at the falls.

Some other photographers had told us that the rocks and cascading water made for some good subjects along Bridalveil Creek just below the Bridalveil Falls. I did find some interesting shots from one of the stone bridges that crosses the creek on the trail from the falls down to Southside Drive.  The light was very "flat" so I kept imagining my shots in black and white. I tried a lot of long exposure shots trying to capture the moving water in that silky, flowing way.  

We headed back to the El Capitan picnic area with slim hopes of some light at sunset. We had rented snowshoes from REI and we explored a bit in the woods around the picnic area looking for possible better viewing angles of the falls. It was pretty obvious that the heavy clouds were going to block the late afternoon sunlight, but we were hoping for that small sliver of clearing on the horizon to let the last minutes of light shine through. Again, our luck didn't prevail and got even less light than the night before.

It started raining late on Saturday evening and the temperature was too high for it to turn to snow.  We awoke Sunday morning to a constant drizzle of rain. We spent most of the day photographing a lot of gray scenes around Cook's meadow. I wasn't too optimistic about my shots as I had a hard time getting the contrast I wanted in any of my shots. We dined a couple of times in the bar at the Yosemite Lodge and can attest to the fine food and beverages. Most welcome was the roaring open fire that they had going!  We drove up to Tunnel View for "sunset" hoping that there might be some dramatic storm clearing opportunities, but once again the gray prevailed and nothing very dramatic developed.

Monday morning we arose, once again, to rain and we headed to Tunnel View for our last shots before heading back to the Sacramento area. We were hopeful that the weather forecast was correct - they were saying the storm would be clearing out and that it would happen earlier rather than later. Again, we weren't real successful but I was getting in the habit of seeing the gray landscapes in black & white.

We headed out of the valley, back to Sacramento as Mike and I had a late afternoon flight to catch back to Tennessee.  Of course the weather broke as we were driving through the central valley and there were some great puffy clouds with patches of blue sky.  Oh well, there is always next year!