It had been way too long, too many years, since I was last in Yosemite Valley.\u00a0 I\u2019ll tell you how long it was.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even have a decent camera at the time.\u00a0 So a chance to spend just one night there was, well, something I was not going to pass up.<\/p>\n
It was late Saturday afternoon when we arrived in the valley.\u00a0 The sky was clear with a few scattered clouds.\u00a0 My wonder at the immensity of the walls was reawakened as I drove to Curry Village.\u00a0 There was enough time to check in and make it back to Tunnel View for what was to prove to be a very nice sunset.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t one of those million dollar sunsets but nice nevertheless.<\/p>\n
I put on my long lens and shot Half Dome with a couple of clouds hanging above it.\u00a0 I\u2019m uploading the pictures now to my computer and am eager to see them.<\/p>\n
During the night the front that everyone was dreading rolled in.\u00a0 Warm and snug in my sleeping bag inside my tent I was lulled to sleep by the spatter of raindrops.\u00a0 What a cozy feeling.\u00a0 Sleep came easily, occasionally punctuated with the sound of a passing shower.<\/p>\n
It was still raining when the alarm went off at 5:00 the next morning.\u00a0 There was no need to jump up and rush out.\u00a0 Our carefully crafted sunrise plans from the night before were inoperable.\u00a0 But on the other hand, this was Yosemite Valley and not a place for sleeping in.<\/p>\n
If landscape photographers are anything, they have to be flexible and patient.\u00a0 With our sunrise plans dashed it was time for some improvisation.\u00a0 We abandoned our plans to shoot Cathedral Rocks and returned to Tunnel View, this time for angry clouds swirling around El Cap.\u00a0 You know what photographers say about bad weather.<\/p>\n
We endured, barely noticed, the snow and sleet that pelted us out there.\u00a0 Actually, we noticed it enough to keep our cameras and lenses covered.\u00a0 Then when the light was right off came the covering, a few shots got snapped and the covering went right back on.\u00a0 Snow was accumulating on my camera bag.\u00a0 And during the waiting (remember the part about patience) I noticed my\u00a0 fingers and toes were really cold.\u00a0 But then the light came back and the anticipation and excitement was an opiate to all the discomfort.<\/p>\n
I had an interesting conversation one of the other photographers out there in the cold.\u00a0 He was a wildlife photographer and we were waiting for the light.\u00a0 I commented that wildlife photography is totally different from landscape.\u00a0 His comment was that with wildlife you get one change at an image and then it\u2019s gone.\u00a0 I agreed with him.\u00a0 The implication was that landscape photographers aren\u2019t under such pressure.\u00a0 They wait for the light.<\/p>\n
But later that day I thought that landscape and wildlife photography are really not all that different.\u00a0 In both you wait around \u2013 wildlife for wild animals, landscape for the light.\u00a0 When the moment comes you have just minutes or even seconds to act.\u00a0 Well, maybe the light isn\u2019t quite as fleeting as a bird on a limb but there are times when you literally have just seconds to get your shot.<\/p>\n
And get shots we did.\u00a0 We were out there for well over an hour watching the clouds and light dance with each other.\u00a0 We were entertained, enthralled, enchanted.\u00a0 \u2018Wonderful\u2019 doesn\u2019t begin to describe the feeling and without realizing it I had gotten chilled to the bone by the time we finally went back to Yosemite Village for breakfast.\u00a0 Yep, now I noticed it.<\/p>\n
After breakfast and before packing up the car, we paid homage to the master by visiting the Ansel Adams Gallery. Then it was time to work in a little more shooting before facing the inevitable reality of the long drive home.\u00a0 Departure time kept on slipping because. well, there was always just one more image to capture.\u00a0 By the time I packed my camera away for the last time and hit the road I had been in the Valley for nearly 24 hours.<\/p>\n
With my soul refreshed and my spirit reminded of how magical this place really is, I started home knowing that there\u2019s no way on earth that it will be years before I return.<\/p>\n
To see more of my photography visit http:\/\/RalphNordstromPhotography.com<\/a><\/p>\n And we do workshops.\u00a0 Check out our\u00a0 schedule at http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/workshops\/<\/a><\/p>\n Or join us on Facebook and become a fan. http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Ralph-Nordstrom-Photography\/112254382772<\/a><\/p>\n (628)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It had been way too long, too many years, since I was last in Yosemite Valley.\u00a0 I\u2019ll tell you how long it was.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t even have a decent camera at the time.\u00a0 So a chance to spend just one night there was, well, something I was not going to pass up. It was late … Continue reading “24 Hours in Yosemite”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[32,162,13,231,256],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-california","tag-nature","tag-photography","tag-sierra-nevada","tag-yosemite-national-park"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-9f","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3903,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions\/3903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}