Sun rising through smoke from Tunnel View, 7/28/14, Yosemite NP, CA, USA
Early Monday morning I drove up to Yosemite Valley, hoping that smoke from the El Portal and Dark Hole fires might create some interesting atmospheric effects. Yes, I went looking for smoke, something that photographers usually avoid. But smoke can impart a wonderful, ethereal quality to photographs – like fog, but with more color.
At Tunnel View the smoke was thick enough to give the scene a misty, painterly look, but not so thick that you couldn’t see anything. Eventually the orange ball of the sun appeared through the smoke, accompanied by a patterned cloud formation (above). Later, along the Merced River, the smoke lent a similar painterly mood to scenes of El Capitan and Three Brothers (below). And much later, near sunset, the sun turned into an orange ball again as it sunk into the smoke to the west (below).
Smoke has a lot of negative connotations, so we don’t think it can be beautiful. That same kind of mental block affects our attitudes towards many other subjects as well. But if we can get past those mental blocks we can find beauty everywhere. One of the joys of photography is that it encourages us to really look at the world closely, and see beyond our preconceptions to find beauty and meaning in surprising places.
Since I know that many of my readers are wonderful, imaginative photographers, I bet many of you have found beauty in unexpected places. If you’ve transformed something ordinary into something sublime, please post a link your images in the comments!
— Michael Frye
Smoky view of Three Brothers, Monday morning
Sun setting through smoke from the El Portal Fire, 7/28/14, Yosemite NP and Stanislaus NF, CA, USA
Related Posts: A Surreal Night; Creating Depth: Beyond the Wide-Angle Formula; Night Photography Workshop
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Michael Frye is a professional photographer specializing in landscapes and nature. He is the author or principal photographer of The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite, Yosemite Meditations, Yosemite Meditations for Women, and Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Great Masters. He has also written three eBooks: Light & Land: Landscapes in the Digital Darkroom, Exposure for Outdoor Photography, and Landscapes in Lightroom 5: The Essential Step-by-Step Guide. Michael 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.
Thanks Michael for reminding everyone that beauty is everywhere & sometimes in the most unexpected places. The pictures are gorgeous.
Thank you Donna!
Thanks, Michael. Fires break hearts of people who love the spaces….but the fires roar with beauty and power, as well.
Thanks Adair!
I can almost smell the smoke looking at the tunnel view shot. I hope the fires come under control soon. Thanks Michael.
Thank you Ed!
It’s nearly like fog. And certainly, those particulates probably reflect a bit of light! I think I’ve read somewhere that the ash from the Krakatoa eruption created intense sunsets for quite some time.
Vivienne, I’m not sure what the exact mechanism is, but smoke does indeed filter out the blue light and leave a lot of red.
Once again, the enormity of the situation shines through in your work (no pun intended). Thank you for sharing.
Thanks Patti!
Thank you again. I have some fire photos of the sun in the valley in previous years but too disorganized to know on what computer they may be hiding. I have changed a time or two
and need to do some better organization. As I have said I take pictures and am not a photographer but sometimes I see shots later and I have taken a photo and know it.
Dawn
Thanks Dawn, and let us know if you find those photos.
Beautiful, powerful images. We visited Yosemite in May, my second time there, and it’s easily one of my favorite places on Earth. My heart dropped hearing about the wildfires, but you’re right: there is something to capture everywhere. Just hoping everyone is safe and they’re contained quickly.
Thank you Meg!
H1!
Thanks for posting these lovely photos of a scary thing.
As a photographer I have mostly been inspired by the close-up worlds in flowers, bugs and raindrops. Since moving here from The Big Island I have been trying to find inspiration in the larger view.
Thanks for the inspiration.
You can see my galleries at fax-Sinclair.com
Aloha!
Thank you Fax!
I have film photographs that I don’t have time today to find and scan, so I will simply describe what I did. There was one year, at Yosemite, that I went around taking photographs of two kinds. The first set are reflections of objects in potholes and similar little pools of water on hard surfaces. I tried to frame them such that it isn’t obvious at first that the image is a reflection.
The second set of photographs was focused on various kinds of frozen ice with bubbles, ice crystals and other interesting formations resulting from slow freezing and refreezing of water.
Nice – thanks for the description Karen.
Michael,
http://mountainmemories.zenfolio.com/p768976144/h27811206#h27811206
This is a link to an image that I made about 10 years after the 2002 Hayman Wildfire which consumed a large part of Pike National Forest in Colorado. Over the years I have revisited the burn area several times to follow its recovery. As of recent the aspen trees in some parts of the burn scar are over 8 feet tall. They are the first trees to repopulate a burn scar due to their syncytial root system. The climax trees, pines and spruce, will eventually return but that will take several decades.
Thanks for sharing those images James – well done. I’m actually surprised that the trees aren’t even bigger by now, but maybe things grow more slowly at higher altitudes.
The altitude may play a role – most of this area is above 9000 feet – but aspens grow best at 9000-11000 feet in Colorado. I think the main factor has been the drought, which, hopefully, is about to end.
Excellent reminder, and beautiful, haunting images of an important event in the life of the Sierra.
Thank you John!