Last weekend I went to Berkeley to teach a two-day photo class. I was working with Nick Didlick, a good friend and excellent photographer from Vancouver, Canada, and we both flew in two days early to meet some friends and drive to Yosemite National Park. I've been lucky enough to visit Yosemite several times over the last few years, so I decided to take a different approach to photographing it this time.
If you've never visited Yosemite, put it on your list. Sometimes referred to as the "Valley of Light," it's a magical place for photographers. Ansel Adams spent a good deal of time there, and some of his classic images are from those visits. You can make the trip a lot faster than Ansel did - from San Francisco it takes about four hours by car, and even in the heart of winter there's usually at least one road open into the valley.
When you do visit, you'll want to make the classic shots: Halfdome, El Capitan, Yosemite Falls, Bridalveil Falls, the valley from Tunnel View. But once you've shot those a few times, what next? That was my challenge this visit - to look for the less obvious shots, to use the valley and the mountains as a backdrop for my photos instead of the photos themselves.
We had plenty of sun, and the temperatures ranged from the upper twenties at night to nearly fifty during the day. There hadn't been much snow the last couple of weeks, but there were still patches we could work with, and ice in spots along the river and creeks. Our days would start half an hour before sunrise and last well into the night, as we worked on light painting and time exposures under the stars and crescent moon.
As always, it was a joy to be there. Giving myself the freedom to ignore the "big" shots allowed me to relax and freed my eyes to see the other things. The snow and ice, rocks, water, ferns and leaves, features of the valley floor that can be as magical as the mountains themselves. It was an important lesson for me: to take the time to look beyond the obvious and find the beauty that's all around us, in the small things.
