After my early morning photography, my wife and I returned to the park to drive to Glacier Point. It is a long drive, but well worth the time, as the views from the stops along this route are spectacular.
Half Dome, Sub Dome, Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls – iPhone Photo
I shot with both my iPhone and my DSLR with 24-70mm lens and 80-400mm lens with an extension tube. It was not optimal time for the best light for landscape photography, but this was the only opportunity I would have to be here for the foreseeable future, so I captured many images while I could do so.
Sub Dome blends into the background in some of these shots, but it is just above and to the left of the two waterfalls, which might appear small in these images, but those are quite large.
Sub Dome and Waterfalls, iPhone Photo
Sub Dome towers above Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls.
The bridge over the stream feeding Nevada falls and the many people around the top of the falls only became apparent upon using the 80-400mm lens.
Nevada Falls 2Vernal Falls 2
There were some people standing near the top of Vernal Falls in this image, but I removed them in Lightroom. I think there may be other people in the far background, but I did not attempt removing those small, fuzzy objects.
These images are representative of the views from Glacier Point and Washburn Point overlooks.
After a sunrise shoot at Tunnel View, I stopped at the parking area for Bridal Veil Falls. The falls can be seen from the parking lot and there is a short trail that gets one much nearer the falls. The trail is easy, but is slightly uphill most of the way, so it does take a little effort to hike.
I switched back to my 24-70mm lens before hiking the trail, but soon realized that the 80-400mm lens would have allowed me to capture close up images of details in the tall, slender waterfall.
The image above gives an idea of how far away the end of the trail viewing area is from the falls. This view covers the entirety of the falls from top to the bottom most part that I could see, including small portions in the bottom left, but excluding the sky to avoid exposure difficulties. I could have gotten a little closer, as a few people do, by climbing beyond the viewing area border, but I elected not to do so. One can easily see how a big lens would be useful for isolating smaller portions of this waterfall.
Bridal Veil Falls
This long, slender waterfall does not fall straight down, but swings back and forth across the rock face. Maybe with a heavier water flow it might fall in a more linear fashion, but this meandering path creates more interesting features and that “veil” appearance.
Bridal Veil Falls – Wide 2
This wider angle view gives a better indication of the local environment.
My online research suggested that Tunnel View at sunrise was a favorite Yosemite NP location for many photographers. I had not been happy with my evening photography at Tunnel View, so I decided to try again at sunrise.
I knew that this would require photographing directly into the rising sun and would be a challenge for getting a good exposure and timing would be critical for catching the first glimpse of the sun as it rose over the horizon.
The evening prior, I had shot with a 24-70mm lens, which did not let me acquire much detail of the distant rock features. So I opted to use my 80-400mm lens with a 1.4x extension at sunrise.
The sky was totally clear this morning, which was a disappointment, since the sky would be bland and uninteresting. Largely due to that bland sky, I converted the only reasonably good images I got this morning to monochrome.
I say pre-sunrise, only because the sun had not shown itself above the horizon that I see, but it is obviously already above the horizon behind this view.
The shadows in the sky cast by some of these rock features was a pleasant surprise and add interest to that bland sky. I especially like that dark streak radiating from the peak of Half Dome.
The sun rose at the right edge of Half Dome and this is the best image that I captured. I could have used software to enhance the sun’s starburst and brought up the shadows a bit more, but I like this more natural look, except for the bright halo behind the sun, which is a highlight that I could not avoid.
After spending a few days in San Jose, California where we enjoyed their annual Jazz Festival and visiting with our son and daughter in law, we traveled to Yosemite NP, staying in lodging just outside the park.
Getting into the park during peak hours of the peak season requires a permit. Fortunately, I was able to secure a permit good for three days, so we were able to drive into the park during the daily peak visiting hours and when going into the park for sunrise or sunset photos, I entered before or after peak hours, so I did not have to wait in line or stop at the entrance station.
Our lodging was not far from Tunnel View, which I had been informed was one of the best locations for photography, so I chose that site as my first sunset shoot. Even though we had driven around main portions of the park, after checking into our lodging, I had not scouted Tunnel View. So I really had no idea what to expect at that location.
As I was driving the route to Tunnel View, I noted that the big rock features along my route were getting some really good late day light, which made me think this would be a good photography outing and I was noting other possible locations for shooting at sunset.
There are two parking areas at Tunnel View, where there were many people, but I had no problem finding a place to park at this late hour of the day. After looking around, it appeared the best place from which to shoot was atop the stone wall bordering the parking lot in which I had chosen to pull into.
I made a number of iPhone images well before sunset and converted these to monochrome, since the color images were not all that interesting. The big feature on the left is El Capitan and in the distance, left of center, is Half Dome.
I cropped in more closely for Tunnel View 2, trying to emphasize more of the golden hour light that only appeared on the very tops a few features here.
There were clouds in the sky, which got some sunset color, but even that was not spectacular and faded quickly.
Sunset Clouds at Tunnel View 2
I waited and watched the clouds as the sunset progressed, hopping for at least some last minute spectacular colors, but that never happened.
This is a wonderful natural scene, but I came away disappointed in my photography experience today. Maybe I was not creative enough, or picked a poor place from which to shoot or maybe I was here at the wrong time, not in the best season, or I should have captured more images prior to golden hour. Whatever…, I do not think I captured this scene very well today.
When planning this road trip and picking a route between Santa Fe, New Mexico and San Jose, California, I drew upon memories from years ago, when I drove a short distance along the California coastline during a business trip to Southern California. Looking at a map the place that I remembered driving through or near back then was Pismo Beach. I don’t recall anything about Pismo Beach other than walking along a pleasant beach, which might not have even been near Pismo Beach, where I was the only one on the beach.
So I booked a room for a couple of nights in Pismo Beach, as our last stop over prior to our San Jose destination. Pismo Beach is a busy tourist town with many lodging choices on or near the beach. So there was no problem finding a place with an ocean view and from which one could be walking along the beach within a few minutes of leaving one’s lodging.
On our first walk along the crowded beach, we walked beneath Pismo Pier and I made the image above with my iPhone. This type image is typical of those that everyone makes below a pier. I cropped closely to the pylons to remove people moving about near the pylons.
Staying in Pismo Beach was not very enjoyable. It was crowded everywhere and noisy everywhere.
On our second day in the area, we drove north of Pismo Beach along highway 101 and highway 1. Highway 1 is a scenic drive near the coastline for a long distance, but we only traveled a small portion of this coastal highway. Highway 1 was still closed north of Lucia due to damage, so we could not have gone much farther than we did.
It was a foggy morning as we began our day, but the fog along the highway mostly dissipated quickly, but there was heavy fog offshore and in patches above the near shore hills.
We stopped in the smallish town of Cambria, where a sign pointing to “Moonstone Beach” got my attention along Highway 1. There was a walkway along the shoreline, where I walked a short distance and shot a few photos.
Wildflowers on Shoreline
I have seen wonderful photos of wildflowers along the California shoreline, but those here were thin and past their prime.
We saw a couple of Elephant Seals along this beach, north of Cambria, but I did not have my big lens on my camera and the seals were just a bit too far away for my 24-70mm lens. The heavy fog bank in the background completely obscures the landscape behind it.
California Coast 2
If I ever come back this way again, staying in Cambria, which has many lodging choices, will be a much better choice than Pismo Beach.
On my final afternoon in Sedona in August, 2024, I decided to go back to Bell Rock and to take the trail up Bell Rock to shoot at sunset.
There were still tourist about, but not so many as during the middle of the day. I’m guessing most tourist had been out during the middle of the day and were back in town for dinner at this late time of the day.
The Bell Rock trail is a wide, gently sloped, gravely path at the beginning and becomes more rocky and steep fairly quickly. Yet, it is mostly easy, with a few big steps, with one notable exception.
I got to one point, where I was not sure where the official trail went. There was a big rock in front of me with an obvious trail marker on top of the rock. There were a couple of young, female hikers, sitting on a rock there, enjoying a late day meal. I asked them about the trail and they indicated that it had to continue on top of the big rock, but they could see no safe way they could continue. One either had to somehow climb the rock, which had a step like rock at its base or navigate a narrow crevice on the other side of the rock. They said it was their first day in this area and they did not want to risk an injury and not be able to enjoy the rest of their stay here, so they stopped at this point.
I considered my options and decided I agreed with them about the risk of continuing on the officially marked route. I looked around, considered and ruled out another option, before deciding I saw a possible route that I could access by backtracking a little.
That alternate route was still not as easy as it looked from a distance. It involved climbing up onto two rock ledges. I laid my tripod and camera up upon each of those ledges in turn and climbed up on my hands and knees (and those hard rocks hurt old knees). After a little more navigation, I got back onto the official trail. Now I had to hope that I could safely get back down.
I shot this panorama with my iPhone. The rock features from right to left are: Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte, Lee Mountain and unidentified ones on the far left.
Upon getting as high up on the Bell Rock slope as I could safely do, it was still well before sunset, yet most of Bell Rock was already in the shade of features to the west. It was obvious that the light illuminating the very peak of Bell Rock was the best “Golden Hour Light” that I would get today. So I made a couple of images and moved around on the rock ledge below this feature to photography the other local features.
This wraps up my photography in the area around Sedona, Arizona in August of 2024.
Thanks for following,
Ken
P.S. Obviously, I made it back down safely, otherwise this post would not exist. I took the official trail down, sliding down that big rock on my rear end until my feet reached the step rock at its base.
Just after the sun’s brief appearance, the cloud cover became heavier and obscured the sun. There were interesting rock features across the valley, so I used those as fore and middle ground to capture those magnificent clouds in the sky.
There were a few ocotillo with vibrant greenery and other trees in the area. I used those as foreground with Cathedral Rock in the background. This required focus stacking images to get good depth of field.
I had a limited time in Sedona and I had never been here previously, so I figured it best to visit the “easy” photographic targets, which were also popular ones.
I had visited the Bell Rock area on my first outing. Today, I planned an early morning shoot at Cathedral Rock. “Planned” is used very loosely. I had not scouted here, other than to drive through the parking lot one day. So I knew how to find the parking lot, but I had no idea about what was involved in hiking the trail nor did I have a scouted location from which to shoot.
There was only one other vehicle in the Cathedral Rock Trail parking lot, when I arrived in early morning dark. I could see lights on the slope at the base of the rock feature, so I figured there were early morning hikers out or maybe even one or more early morning photographers.
I had a quick snack, finished the cup of coffee I had brought from the motel, gathered my camera, tripod, headlamp and began walking through the parking lot, looking for the trailhead. In the dark, I walked past the trailhead, went into an adjacent parking area, where I encountered a small group of young people getting out of their vehicles. They greeted me in a friendly manner and I asked about the trailhead. They told me that I had just walked past it and where to find it. They also said I could follow them as they were headed that way. But I went ahead, just getting on the trail, when they quickly came in behind me. Seeing that they were experienced on this trail, had bright headlamps and were likely to be much faster hikers than me, I let them pass and fell in behind.
The trail was well defined, but rugged and a little steep as it headed uphill. After getting out of the forest on the lower slope of the trail, it became light enough that I did not need the headlamp and the young, energetic hikers rapidly gained ground ahead of me.
It was a warm, humid morning and I worked up a sweat before arriving at an open area beneath the Cathedral Rock feature. It was well before sunrise and I had a wide open view across the landscape to the east.
There were plentiful clouds in the sky and daylight was beginning to show in the distance. I made a few images of the pre-sunrise sky, then scouted around for a good place from which to shoot Cathedral Rock. I was disappointed at the views I had, looking up at that feature. The young hikers were nowhere to be seen and I assumed they had continued along the trail.
Cathedral Rock – My Initial View
I began to work my way up a dry drainage, trying to get to a better vantage point, taking time to check out various locations off to the side of the drainage, up the steep slope, where ever I could safely do so.
I never succeeded in getting a really good, open view of the most attractive portions of the unique rock features, but being well off of the beaten path, maybe I got views that other have not. Setting up for these shots was not easy either, at times I had to abandon my tripod and shoot handheld.
As I was shooting from well below these rock features, I kept hearing voices, which I hoped were not just in my head. Eventually, I realized the voices were coming from those young people I had followed part of the way up the trail and they were rock climbers, not just hikers. I could occasionally just barely make out one or two up on the rocks. That is when I realized that in the dim light, I had missed a junction in the trail that would have taken me to the base of these rocks. This is why knowledge of the area is important, when planning an effective photo shoot. So, someday maybe I will get back here and I will know where to go. But I can’t deny that I enjoyed the experience and challenge of exploring in the off trail area below the main feature.
Cathedral Rock – A wider view
If memory serves me correctly, I think I shot this image sitting on a narrow, slope ledge that I was able to pick my way onto above the dry drainage. The early morning clouds abbreviated the golden hour, which lasted for only a few minutes this morning.
Sedona, Arizona is in a picturesque setting with massive, colorful rock formations all around. It is also a popular tourist city with all the trappings of such a city, many shops, restaurants and art galleries.
In the outlying areas there are many popular hiking trails, scenic destinations and places popular with rock climbers.
My wife and I drove around the local area around the city to check out the scenery. I made mental notes about possible places to return to at sunrise or sunset to engage in my photography hobby.
My first chosen destination, Bell Rock, for a sunset shoot is just off of a major road and is a popular tourist draw. As I left our motel in Sedona, an afternoon thunderstorm erupted with lots of lightening and heavy rain. The local rock features that are visible from the city streets were surrounded by clouds with intermittent breaks in the clouds allowing sunlight to illuminate those features for a short while. There would have been great photographic opportunities during the storm, if only there had been a place to safely pull over out of the heavy late day traffic and not be exposed to the heavy rain and possible lightening. I could only observe and admire the views, wishing I were able to photograph the storm.
I hoped that there would still be some of the storm around when I arrived at the Bell Rock parking area, but the storm had moved on into the far distance by the time that I arrived. The nearby sky was mostly clear, but the distant storm clouds were still visible.
There are a number of hiking trails around and near Bell Rock. Most tourists opt to hike up the slope towards Bell Rock. I decided to hike the less popular trail that went around behind Bell Rock towards other rock features nearby. I only recall encountering two or three others on this trail. The parking lot was not nearly as full, this late in the day, as it had been during my scouting pass through it earlier in the day.
As these first two images reveal, the distant clouds caused the light to constantly vary from entire shade to partial shade and the sky to vary from dark to light.
I made numerous, not so interesting, photographs of the distant rock outcrops as the late day light changed. While the distant storm clouds added interest, it was not until I noted a faint rainbow appear that I began to hope for something more interesting. Indeed, as I watched the scene that rainbow became brighter and a double rainbow appeared, seemingly terminating on the rocks with a golden glow from the late day sunlight.
As I prepared to photograph this old, majestic tree skeleton (old trees like this are one of my favorite subjects), the clouds in the sky began to glow with the golden color of sunset light. The golden cloud was perfectly positioned above the tree, as if forming a crown of honor and remembrance for the old tree.
As I walked the trail back towards the parking lot, after my late day shoot, I had to stop to capture these colorful, post sunset clouds with the silhouette of rock formations in the foreground.
When I turned to look back at this rock feature, I noted that the color was a deeper red just after sunset. In researching this area, I had seen information that said these rocks looked best for photography just after sunset sunset. My observation confirms that statement.
This is a continuation of my attempt to capture some of the charm of Santa Fe, New Mexico, while avoiding the horde of tourists.
Window ReflectionIron Man
I do not know the actual title of this work of art that is in the open plaza area behind the Santa Fe Museum of Fine Art. I made this photograph from the street, shooting through an iron picket gate. I simply called it “Iron Man” for convenience, but I expect it has an official name given by the artist.
Angst
I’m again using artistic license to label this photo “Angst”, as I’m imagining hands on head below a threatening sky, but I’m sure this was not the artist’s intention.
Light Center
This is the center of a red Hibiscus flower and the white center is actually yellow in the color version.
Light Center 2 – Red Hibiscus flower in Black and White.Light Center 3 – Red, White, Pink Hibiscus flower in monochromeRose PetalsShadow on Adobe WallClouds over Santa FeThe Church of Antioch, Santa Fe
