Butter Hetch Hetchy Resevoir Yosemite National Park, CA Every year I head to Yosemite National Park for my birthday. Last year was a fluke year and it was miserably cold and snowed on us. The weather for our trip this year looked only mildly better but turned out to be absolutely gorgeous. It was warm (perfect hiking weather, not too hot but not cold), sunny, and just wonderful. On Sunday we slept in a little bit, packed up the campsite, and ventured over to Hetch Hetchy, an 8 mile long man-made reservoir that feeds San Francisco and the Bay Area with clean drinking water. In the early 1900's the O'Shaughnessy Dam was built that turned the gorgeous Hetch Hetchy Valley into a reservoir. Today you can hike along numerous trails on the edges of the reservoir. We started the 5 mile round trip hike to Wapama Falls and found this butterfly enjoying a wonderful purple flower. I only had my 17-35mm f/2.8 lens with me and didn't think I could get a decent shot before the butterfly flew away but she decided to stay and hang out for several minutes while I clicked about 60 shots and got nice and close (note that this was shot at 35mm!!!). If only I had my 105mm macro this could have been even awesomer of a shot! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 35mm, f/3.5, 1/1250 sec, ISO 320, Handheld B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer

Following the footsteps of Ansel Adams

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One of my jobs at work is to run the Summer Intern Committee that puts on a program for the 70 or so interns this summer. Amongst the many events that we planned, we decided to take 25 interns to Yosemite for the weekend! We did not have work on Friday and we piled into cars and drove the 3.5 hours over to Yosemite. Once everyone arrived we grabbed lunch in Curry Village and then hiked up Vernal Falls.

Due to the massive amount of water and the number of deaths on this trail (including 3 this week!) several of us didn't want to take the Mist Trail back down. Instead we took a trail that lead up for about 0.75 miles, met up with the John Muir trail and then headed back down to the base of the Valley. On the connector trail was this *gorgeous* view-point that I never knew existed!

I love how this point has a high vantage -- you can see the entire falls and get a sense of the scale of how much water and how big this waterfall is!

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
20mm, f/11, 1/320 sec, ISO 250, Handheld

Double Moonbow
Yosemite Falls Trail
Yosemite National Park, CA

My photo buddy, Willie, has been waiting for about a year to capture another moonbow over Yosemite Falls and this week turned out to be the moonbow week! We decided to take half a day off from work and left after lunch on Tuesday and drove up to Yosemite. We grabbed dinner, packed our gear and started hiking up the Upper Yosemite Falls Trail. It's a grueling 2 mile hike up 1,000 feet to the first "Yosemite Falls Lookout" and we got to the lookout with plenty of time to spare. Apparently we weren't the only ones to have this idea as there were several other photographers already there and several more arrived after us.

About 30 seconds before I took out my tripod another photographer grabbed the spot I wanted! Doh! I ended up finding another spot, up on top of a small rock cliff that worked decently enough. I had some trees to contend with but got a decent enough composition without any trees. My spot was also much drier than where my friends were shooting from. The wind picked up at night and was blowing water from the falls all over us. I constantly had use my micro-fiber cloth to dry the front of my lens.

The battery of my wireless shutter release also happened to die just as the moonbow was starting. Trying to hand hold on BULB mode didn't work so I had to limit my exposures to 30 seconds :( It turned out to work decently as my D300s performed nicely even at ISO 500 and even up to ISO 640.

I didn't even notice there was a double rainbow in this until I got home! The moonbow was REALLY bright -- you could even start to see the color with the naked eye (which is usually impossible due to the structure of our eye failing to see color at night).

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
28mm, f/5, 30 sec, ISO 500, Tripod
No HDR, no saturation increase, minor edits

Butter
Hetch Hetchy Resevoir
Yosemite National Park, CA

Every year I head to Yosemite National Park for my birthday. Last year was a fluke year and it was miserably cold and snowed on us. The weather for our trip this year looked only mildly better but turned out to be absolutely gorgeous. It was warm (perfect hiking weather, not too hot but not cold), sunny, and just wonderful.

On Sunday we slept in a little bit, packed up the campsite, and ventured over to Hetch Hetchy, an 8 mile long man-made reservoir that feeds San Francisco and the Bay Area with clean drinking water. In the early 1900's the O'Shaughnessy Dam was built that turned the gorgeous Hetch Hetchy Valley into a reservoir. Today you can hike along numerous trails on the edges of the reservoir.

We started the 5 mile round trip hike to Wapama Falls and found this butterfly enjoying a wonderful purple flower. I only had my 17-35mm f/2.8 lens with me and didn't think I could get a decent shot before the butterfly flew away but she decided to stay and hang out for several minutes while I clicked about 60 shots and got nice and close (note that this was shot at 35mm!!!). If only I had my 105mm macro this could have been even awesomer of a shot!

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
35mm, f/3.5, 1/1250 sec, ISO 320, Handheld
B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer

Night's Tail
Horsetail Falls, Fire Falls, via Moonlight
Yosemite National Park, CA

Many photographers know about Horsetail Falls in Yosemite and that every February it lights up into a "Fire Falls." In fact, I photographed this exact event in February of this year and it was spectacular. Many photographers, however, do not know that the same phenomenon occurs via moonlight on some rare occasions!

On Saturday, April 16th 2011 I woke up at 3am and headed over to the Picnic Grounds at Yosemite National Park. When I arrived the moon was really lighting up the falls but the angle wasn't quite right to turn the falls red. After a couple minutes of setting up and figuring out my camera settings all of a sudden the photos started turning orange! It lasted for about 10 minutes before the falls were completely dark.

Note that to the human eye the falls appeared white but to the camera it appeared red! The human eye has 2 photo-receptors: rods and cones. Cones are really good at detail and color but require a lot of light. They don't work so well in low light (night). Rods on the other hand, are really good at low light but they can't detect color. So at night, in this scene, our eye only saw the brightness of the falls but the camera sensor saw the beautiful color!

There is NO saturation change to this. The only thing I did after taking this photo was a small white balance adjustment, some sharpening, and some noise reduction!

I'd also like to note the difficulties in taking this photo. It was nearly pitch black and the camera cannot focus at all. Additionally, using LiveMode, as I did during the sunset Fire Falls, doesn't work either since the LiveMode displayed a completely black view. I had to set the camera to focus at infinity, took a photo, and then tweaked the focus. I continued this until I got a shot that was in focus. Additionally, since there's so little light I had to bump the ISO wayyyyyy up. Additionally, I had to turn "Long Exposure Noise Reduction" and "High ISO Noise Reduction" off or I would have missed out on taking photos of the event. I did the noise reduction later on in Photoshop. Lastly, I had to keep the shutter short just to try to keep the star trails to a minimum.

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR:
112mm, f/4.8, 30 sec, ISO 2000, Tripod

Destroyer of the One Ring (2)
Horsetail Falls, Fire Falls
Yosemite National Park, CA

For two weeks every year Horsetail Falls, in Yosemite National Park, becomes one of the most sought after spots to photograph. Made famous by Galen Rowell in his "Natural Firefall photograph" (Ansel Adams did document this photograph but as a black-and-white landscape photo), many photographers (including myself) try to duplicate his effort.

Situated on the northern side of the valley, and at the extreme eastern end of the El Capitan monolith wall, the falls catch the last rays of the setting sun for only about one month of the year. At midwinter, the sun sets below the southwestern rim. As the year progresses, the sun sets a bit further north along the western horizon. By the end of January, if you are standing at the El Capitan picnic area parking lot, you can see the sun setting in the Gunsight, the V between Cathedral rocks on the eastern side of Bridal Veil Falls. By the first few days of February, it sets to the right of the lowest Cathedral rock. Provided the sky is clear, the sunlight illuminates the entire El Capitan North America wall, and if you are in a position east of the falls, it backlights the water, making it glow with amazing colors

In mid-to-late February each year, when the atmospheric conditions as well as the angle of the sun, hit Horsetail Falls just right, the entire falls look as if they are *ON FIRE*! In order for the falls to burn you need sunlight (the clouds can't be blocking the setting sun), and water (which occurs when the snowpack above El Capitan is melting).

There are 3 places that you can easily view Horsetail Falls. The first, and most popular, is the El Capitan picnic area (on Northside Drive). This provides the closest view, but it's at further east and a harsher angle and some people didn't see the falls light up from this spot while the other locations did. The two other locations are along Southside Drive, with the best spot being where we snapped away (GPS coordinates 37.72783,-119.609).

We got to Yosemite at about noon on Sunday, hoping that the incoming storm would keep the clouds away and light up the falls for us. We scoped out all 3 locations and decided that the Southside Dr location was best. We arrived back there at 2:30pm, which was just in time, because photographers were starting to line up and we had to rush to claim a good spot. We made friends with the photographers around us -- which was a good thing because we had 3 hours to kill while the sun set. Peak "Firefalling" was supposed to start at 5:22pm but clouds had settled in and we started to get sad that we drove/waited all this time for nothing. At about 5:31pm we noticed the bottom of the falls started to glow. Sure enough a couple seconds later the clouds parted and the entire falls lit up on fire, right before our eyes! We had 7 minutes to snap our hearts away (and stop and just gawk at this amazing site) before the sun set and the firefalls returned to waterfalls.

I rented a Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR for this shoot. I wanted to make sure I got the sharpest images possible. I stuck my old 70-300mm lens on my D80 and an extra tripod and snapped away with that as well. I should have paid more attention to my good camera/lens because I made some silly mistakes (like allowing the photos to be over-exposed) due to my running back and forth between cameras.

I hope you enjoy these photos of Horsetail Falls (Fire Falls)!

Destroyer of The One Ring
Taken on February 13, 2011 at Horsetail Falls in Yosemite National Park, CA

Destroyer of the One Ring
Horsetail Falls, Fire Falls
Yosemite National Park, CA

For two weeks every year Horsetail Falls, in Yosemite National Park, becomes one of the most sought after spots to photograph. Made famous by Galen Rowell in his "Natural Firefall photograph" (Ansel Adams did document this photograph but as a black-and-white landscape photo), many photographers (including myself) try to duplicate his effort.

Situated on the northern side of the valley, and at the extreme eastern end of the El Capitan monolith wall, the falls catch the last rays of the setting sun for only about one month of the year. At midwinter, the sun sets below the southwestern rim. As the year progresses, the sun sets a bit further north along the western horizon. By the end of January, if you are standing at the El Capitan picnic area parking lot, you can see the sun setting in the Gunsight, the V between Cathedral rocks on the eastern side of Bridal Veil Falls. By the first few days of February, it sets to the right of the lowest Cathedral rock. Provided the sky is clear, the sunlight illuminates the entire El Capitan North America wall, and if you are in a position east of the falls, it backlights the water, making it glow with amazing colors

In mid-to-late February each year, when the atmospheric conditions as well as the angle of the sun, hit Horsetail Falls just right, the entire falls look as if they are *ON FIRE*! In order for the falls to burn you need sunlight (the clouds can't be blocking the setting sun), and water (which occurs when the snowpack above El Capitan is melting).

There are 3 places that you can easily view Horsetail Falls. The first, and most popular, is the El Capitan picnic area (on Northside Drive). This provides the closest view, but it's at further east and a harsher angle and some people didn't see the falls light up from this spot while the other locations did. The two other locations are along Southside Drive, with the best spot being where we snapped away (GPS coordinates 37.72783,-119.609).

We got to Yosemite at about noon on Sunday, hoping that the incoming storm would keep the clouds away and light up the falls for us. We scoped out all 3 locations and decided that the Southside Dr location was best. We arrived back there at 2:30pm, which was just in time, because photographers were starting to line up and we had to rush to claim a good spot. We made friends with the photographers around us -- which was a good thing because we had 3 hours to kill while the sun set. Peak "Firefalling" was supposed to start at 5:22pm but clouds had settled in and we started to get sad that we drove/waited all this time for nothing. At about 5:31pm we noticed the bottom of the falls started to glow. Sure enough a couple seconds later the clouds parted and the entire falls lit up on fire, right before our eyes! We had 7 minutes to snap our hearts away (and stop and just gawk at this amazing site) before the sun set and the firefalls returned to waterfalls.

I rented a Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR for this shoot. I wanted to make sure I got the sharpest images possible. I stuck my old 70-300mm lens on my D80 and an extra tripod and snapped away with that as well. I should have paid more attention to my good camera/lens because I made some silly mistakes (like allowing the photos to be over-exposed) due to my running back and forth between cameras.

I hope you enjoy these photos of Horsetail Falls (Fire Falls)!

Destroyer of The One Ring
Taken on February 13, 2011 at Horsetail Falls in Yosemite National Park, CA

Classic Ansel
Valley View
Yosemite National Park, CA

El Capitan, Half Dome, and Bridalveil Falls from Tunnel View
Taken on May 23, 2010 at Tunnel View in Yosemite National Park, CA

On Sunday we finally got warmer weather and blue skies. I really wanted to get a blue-skied shot from Tunnel View and I knew Sunday was going to be the day for it. I was also excited because there were still some clouds around that would make the shot a bit more interesting.

The lighting was decent for shooting at noon, but things still were a bit murky without taking multiple exposures. I really wanted to capture the fact that there is still SNOW in the mountains (near Half Dome).

Spring Waterfall Steps Down During Storm
Taken on May 22, 2010 near Curry Village in Yosemite National Park, CA

Stormy Day 2
Yosemite National Park
California

When we got back to the campsite after hiking Nevada Falls we were pretty wet, hungry, and frozen (Sammi had turned into an ice-cube). To warm up we decided to go to Curry Village and get some coffee, hot-chocolate, and just roam around the store and pick up some souvenirs. Zack offered to drive (which I thought was silly) but his car was going to be super warm and Sammi needed to thaw, so I took him up on his offer. Unfortunately, there was a HUGE line of traffic from people trying to leave early on Saturday evening. I think we sat in line for about 30 minutes just trying to move the 0.2miles to Curry Village. At one point I got sick of waiting in the car so I got out, took my camera, and decided to see if maybe everything was stopped because of a bear (there was no bear, it was just a lot of traffic).

As I was walking along the road just outside of the Pines campground and just next to Curry Village, I looked up and saw some *amazing* clouds over Yosemite Falls. They made just enough of an opening for Yosemite Falls to peak through it. I immediately put my camera to my eye and snapped away!

Butter
Hetch Hetchy Resevoir
Yosemite National Park, CA

Every year I head to Yosemite National Park for my birthday. Last year was a fluke year and it was miserably cold and snowed on us. The weather for our trip this year looked only mildly better but turned out to be absolutely gorgeous. It was warm (perfect hiking weather, not too hot but not cold), sunny, and just wonderful.

On Sunday we slept in a little bit, packed up the campsite, and ventured over to Hetch Hetchy, an 8 mile long man-made reservoir that feeds San Francisco and the Bay Area with clean drinking water. In the early 1900's the O'Shaughnessy Dam was built that turned the gorgeous Hetch Hetchy Valley into a reservoir. Today you can hike along numerous trails on the edges of the reservoir.

We started the 5 mile round trip hike to Wapama Falls and found this butterfly enjoying a wonderful purple flower. I only had my 17-35mm f/2.8 lens with me and didn't think I could get a decent shot before the butterfly flew away but she decided to stay and hang out for several minutes while I clicked about 60 shots and got nice and close (note that this was shot at 35mm!!!). If only I had my 105mm macro this could have been even awesomer of a shot!

Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S:
35mm, f/3.5, 1/1250 sec, ISO 320, Handheld
B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer

Butter Hetch Hetchy Resevoir Yosemite National Park, CA Every year I head to Yosemite National Park for my birthday. Last year was a fluke year and it was miserably cold and snowed on us. The weather for our trip this year looked only mildly better but turned out to be absolutely gorgeous. It was warm (perfect hiking weather, not too hot but not cold), sunny, and just wonderful. On Sunday we slept in a little bit, packed up the campsite, and ventured over to Hetch Hetchy, an 8 mile long man-made reservoir that feeds San Francisco and the Bay Area with clean drinking water. In the early 1900's the O'Shaughnessy Dam was built that turned the gorgeous Hetch Hetchy Valley into a reservoir. Today you can hike along numerous trails on the edges of the reservoir. We started the 5 mile round trip hike to Wapama Falls and found this butterfly enjoying a wonderful purple flower. I only had my 17-35mm f/2.8 lens with me and didn't think I could get a decent shot before the butterfly flew away but she decided to stay and hang out for several minutes while I clicked about 60 shots and got nice and close (note that this was shot at 35mm!!!). If only I had my 105mm macro this could have been even awesomer of a shot! Nikon D300s w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 35mm, f/3.5, 1/1250 sec, ISO 320, Handheld B+W F-Pro Circular Polarizer" href="javascript:openLB(1306754797,'',XLarge,'',1024,680);">