Sunbeams striking El Capitan, 6:32 a.m. Sunday
Winter arrived late in Yosemite this year, but now it seems reluctant to leave. Of course that’s fine with me, as I love photographing storms, and we certainly need the moisture.
A short but intense weather system dropped about an inch of precipitation on Yosemite Valley Saturday afternoon and evening. The storm began with rain, but quickly changed to snow. I was in the valley on Saturday for the Yosemite Conservancy Spring Forum, and driving out at about 5:30 in the afternoon I encountered blizzard conditions, with thick snow blowing sideways. I stopped at El Capitan Meadow and set up my camera and tripod underneath the back hatch of my car to try and capture the falling snow (see the photograph below). I managed to keep the camera dry, but my pants were soon coated with an inch of snow.
It looked like we might see clearing on Sunday morning, so Claudia and I drove up early and joined about ten other people at Tunnel View. We started talking and socializing, but all that stopped when some breaks appeared in the clouds, and then rays of sun struck El Capitan (above).
Then it started snowing again, and then it cleared a little, and another squall arrived, and cleared. I kept trying to leave. Once I had even packed up my camera and put it in the car, but the clouds started breaking up again, so I took the camera and tripod out again. And I’m glad I did, as we kept seeing wonderful light and mist during those breaks (you can see two of the photographs made during these breaks below). Eventually, around 10 o’clock, the showers ended and it cleared for good.
As we drove home we had a chance to check on the poppies and redbud in the Merced River Canyon, along Highway 140 west of the park. About half of the redbud are in full bloom, with the other half budding. Nearly all of them should be blooming in a week or so.
Despite the dry winter—or maybe because of it—it’s a good year for poppies. We saw large swaths of them covering the hillsides on the north side of the river between Briceburg and the rock slide detour. Reaching these areas requires at least two miles of hiking (one way), but they can be photographed from across the river with long lenses. There are some more accessible poppies along the south side of the river at “Grandy’s Hill,” about a mile west of the detour, and at the beginning of the Hite’s Cove trail.
Will we get more spring storms? There’s a chance of showers in the forecast for Wednesday, but nothing major in sight. March ended with 68 percent of average precipitation for Yosemite Valley since last July. These late storms have helped, and brought fairly normal spring conditions to Yosemite, but we could certainly use some more rain and snow. Does anyone know a rain dance?
—Michael Frye
Driving snow, 5:43 p.m. Saturday
Sun breaking through, 8:42 a.m. Sunday
Light striking El Capitan, 9:15 a.m. Sunday
Related Posts: Storm’s Aftermath; Winter Storm Warning for Yosemite
Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He is the author and photographer of The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, Yosemite Meditations, and Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters, plus the eBook Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom. He has written numerous magazine articles on the art and technique of photography, and his images have been published in over thirty countries around the world. Michael has lived either in or near Yosemite National Park since 1983, currently residing just outside the park in Mariposa, California
Great pictures Mike!
I really love the way you “deal” with shadows, far away from irreal look.
Are the pictures a one exposure shoot?
Regards from Catalunya
Thanks David! Shadows are good. Photographs need contrast.
Two of these images are exposure blends – the first and third. The first is all one image except for the brightest patch of sky, just left of Middle Cathedral Rock, where I use Photoshop to blend in some detail in the clouds from a darker exposure. The third was a very high-contrast scene, and is a blend of four exposures using LR/Enfuse and some additional manual blending around the sun in Photoshop.
Great photos Michael!
Albert
Thanks Albert!
“I kept trying to leave.” Ha–I know that feeling. Beautiful moody shots–I really like the blowing snow with the hanging branch just barely highlighted by light.
Thanks Robin. I like that one too, but maybe, at least in part, because of the effort it took to make it!
Lovely, evocative images, Michael! It’s true – bad weather (and a good photographer!) makes for good photos! 🙂
— Jack
Thank you Jack!
Beautiful…I was there on Sunday as well. There were so many great photo opportunities it was mind blowing. I think I may have gotten some good ones but now my memory card is “corrupt.” Does anyone have any suggestions on how to recover them? I tried recovery software but no luck. I’m just devastated.
Wow Monica, that is devastating. Patti has a suggestion below – the Geeks at Best Buy. Which recovery software did you try? There are lots of choices, and one might work when others don’t. I’ve used CardRescue with success, though only from accidental erasure, not corruption. It’s not free, but I think you can download a trial and it will tell you whether it found images on the card before you have to pay to recover them.
Thanks for the input. I’ll try CardRescue today just to see if it can find anything. I tried several free programs but maybe you get what you pay for. I just keep hoping. I live in Mariposa so I know I will have the opportunity again but the conditions on Sunday were unusual enough that who knows when. I have to go to Fresno on Thursday so I can try Best Buy if nothing else works. I really appreciate the input.
@Michael:
Breathtaking!! You NEVER disappoint and ALWAYS leave me wanting more!! (There. I’ve used the two words we shouldn’t use, and in the same sentence, no less *LOL*)
@Monica:
If you have a Best Buy store nearby, you can ask one of the Geeks. My external hard drive crashed last week and that’s how I found out about the data retrieval service. Good luck.
Thanks Patti, especially for using those two words! 🙂 And thanks for the suggestion for Monica.
Thanks Patti….I’ll give them a try.
Damn, Michael (I use the word judiciously here), you’ve a talent for capturing Yosemite at its most magical. I know a lot of patience, hard work, and freezing your tail off go into it, but the Ansel-angel definitely is sitting on your shoulder.
-eric
Thank you very much Eric!
As always amazing and inspiring. Thank you for your sharing with all of us. Dale
Thanks Dale!
I love the storm pictures as usual. Hats off to you for staying and getting the breaks of light! Keep the pics coming. Thanks for sharing, Michael.
Thanks Karl. It’s always a dilemma – stay or go? No one gets it right all the time. And who knows what I missed by staying?
These are the most beautiful late winter shots of Yosemite, I’ve seen! I really like the snowing shot, very serene.
Thanks very much Kim!
Technical question, Michael. How did you expose the shots into the sun? On the monitor, the bright sections look completely blown out. At the 4×6 inches they are on my monitor, it doesn’t detract from the shot, but I would think it’s a problem if they’re enlarged much. Is there any detail at all in the highlights, or did you just let them go? How did you decide? Inquiring minds… it’s s situation I run into as well.
Thanks,
-eric
Eric, exposing into the sun is definitely difficult. I talk about this and show a couple of examples in my latest eBook on exposure. In the first example there (#8) I wasn’t concerned about getting detail in and around the sun, because those areas were blank – no clouds. The other example (#10) is similar to the third photograph here, a high-contrast scene where I wanted to get detail in the clouds near the sun, and even show the disc of the sun itself. In that example, and the first and third photographs here, I used auto-bracketing to make sure I had at least one exposure with detail in those bright clouds, and at least one with shadow detail as well. Then I blended the exposures together with LR/Enfuse, and in the third photograph here also added some manual blending in Photoshop of those areas around the sun.
On my monitor there’s detail in all the highlights of these images (though just barely), except for perhaps some very small areas in those first and third images. This detail is actually more apparent when I enlarge the images. But if there were some small blown-out highlights near the sun I wouldn’t be that concerned, as that’s the way it would look in real life. While we normally don’t see washed-out bright areas in our daily life (one reason to be concerned about avoiding that in photographs), a big exception is when we look right at the sun. Blown highlights near the sun in the photograph look normal and natural, because it resembles what we see when we look at the sun. I’d prefer to have detail in clouds near the sun, but it doesn’t necessarily ruin the photograph if there are some small washed-out areas. There are some blown highlights near the sun in this image, for example:
https://www.michaelfrye.com/2011/05/31/yosemite’s-late-spring-continues/
thank you, sir. I’ll have to try enfuse.
These photos are striking. Very nice job!
Thanks Harrisburg!
Sigh. Once again, I am completely and utterly jealous. I also found out a couple of my friends ran into you at Tunnel View (Kevin and Rochelle from Sonora). 🙂 Love all the clouds and great mood. Like Robin, I like the branch peeking through that heavy snow. Very dramatic! You get the sense of how hard that snow was falling.
Thanks very much Vivienne. No need to sigh – just go out and make some great photos and you’ll feel better! 🙂
Hi Michael. I’m the Kevin Vivienne mentions above. Thanks for the wildflower info down hwy 140. We did hike a little ways up Hite Cove but the storm had the poppies hiding. It was really nice further down, just like you said it would be.
Love your shots. The main shot has so much drama, and the mix of warm and cool tones in it sure works for me. Your blowing snow shot is making me laugh a little bit because Rochelle wanted to go out in that storm on Saturday. 🙂
Thanks Kevin – hope you got some great images from that morning! Glad you found some poppies as well. Going out in that blizzard on Saturday wouldn’t be recommended – it was hard enough to just underneath my hatch!
Hi Michael, Great photograph! I was one of the photographers who was up there at tunnel view that morning. Seemed like a lot more than 10 of us up there. I’m the one that had to one up everyone by letting you know I helped to pay for part of one of your lunches since I bought your book. You showed up at the perfect moment. What was looking like not such a hot morning with the low clouds and solid gray sky really turned into something amazing when that sun broke through. This is one of my shots from that morning http://www.laharris.com/gallery/images/yosemite%20snow%20sunrise.jpg
Larry, thanks, and I’m glad you were able to get some good images that morning. And thanks for buying the book! 🙂
Whoa! Gorgeous work. I recently found your website via View From the Little Red Tent. I marvel at the various moods and highlighting intrigue deftly captured and blended together, especially in your first photograph. Evocative music such as from the late Richard Burmer comes to mind. Bravo! Pure artistry, Michael.
BTW, probably a bit of an overactive imagination here, but at the top of El Capitan looks as though a Gremlin is peeking out — left eye in blue, oval extending outward –gray right eye.
I look forward to continuing to check out the new delights and magic you capture.
Betty, thanks very much for the kind words! And… I’m trying to see that gremlin… 🙂
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