Travel Blog #5: Yosemite Part 1

Fall 1995 is the first time I had ever seen a photo which made me know I had to visit anywhere. When my roommate and I went to a friend’s off-campus apartment during welcome week at Michigan State, he had a poster of Ansel Adams’ Monolith hanging and I immediately was taken by it. To say that poster has been influential in my desire to travel would be an understatement. I had no desire to go to California beyond maybe a trip to the beach or see a baseball game. Seeing that poster put Yosemite at the top of my “must do” list once I was able to afford it. 28 years later, I was able to see the same mountains and falls Ansel Adams spent much of his life photographing.

Not taking this trip lightly, as it may be a once in a lifetime occasion, I made sure to brush up on the few things I knew of how Adams shot this park. I didn’t want to copy his images, but I did want at least a few of mine to show how much his work has influenced how I try to look at scenes. He didn’t shoot color because he said it took away from the power of the image black and white makes. He tried to make clean, clear, “pure” photos and that’s what I wanted to do. I don’t have a large format camera like the 8x10 Graflex I’ve seen pictures of him using. But I did read a blurb of him using a Leica Rangefinder and that is what I knew I would be using along with the sharpest lens I own, a Leitz Summicron 50 mm f1.4. It is the most basic camera I have and being from the 1960’s could absolutely be something he would have shot while walking home from his workshop or hiking through the park.

We spent the night outside the park in Oakhurst, and our hotel was right next door to a small Gallery by the name of Firefall. I hadn’t planned to stop in, but I was bored and the thrift shops around weren’t exactly “thrift prices”. The owner greeted us, and we chatted about the park for just a few minutes, giving me possibly the best insight to visiting and I am passing it on to you now. Get there early, when I mentioned we planned to be at the gate around 6, she said, “that should still be OK” and honestly, I’m not sure we got there early enough.

Yosemite was by far the busiest place we went on any part of this vacation, and if you find a parking spot, just plan on leaving it there the rest of the day and taking shuttle buses or walking. This area of the park is just one big loop and the shuttle buses run regularly. Admittedly, the park service did say this was one of the most visited months and had just under 66,000 cars come through the gates. If that makes you not want to visit, I wholeheartedly still highly recommend spending at least a day at what I consider one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been. We spent the day there, did three hikes and left the park exhausted feeling like this is a place we need to come back to again someday. The only disappointment for me was Glacier Point being closed due to snow (amongst several other areas), which reinforced the need for a return trip.

I had high hopes for Yosemite, but I have learned to temper by enthusiasm for the first few stops of parks…this does not apply here. When you see the sign for Tunnel View, just plan to stop immediately when you exit the tunnel. The left lot was packed which is where we stopped, the right-hand lot was half empty and would have been much easier to exit. The sun was coming up and the valley was still covered in fog. I don’t generally like sun flare in my photos, but I knew there was nothing I could do except try to minimize it and maybe “place” it in an aesthetically reasonable spot in the frame. From here we were able to see the two main peaks in the park (El Capitan and Half Dome), and I think if we had stopped on the right side, you could possibly see Three Brothers and Horsetail Falls as well.

This day was off to a great start, and after we got onto the main road through the park, we pulled over maybe a half mile from where we came through Tunnel View to get our first up close view of El Capitan. We didn’t see any climbers (with binoculars), but we were told they were there most days. The sun was hitting El Cap just early enough it didn’t quite destroy the shadows, and the Merced River was swollen with snow melt, engulfing the base of the trees on its banks. This is the first spot I’ve been and felt like any photo I took would be good, it was just a matter of thinking through what I wanted the end product to look like. The sun being behind me for these photos eliminated the flare I had showing up at Tunnel View, which made for a much cleaner picture.

In a perfect world, we would have been able to park at the base of our first planned hike to Vernal Falls. In reality, we parked at what I think is a campground overflow lot a little over a mile away. This was our first real experience with crowds. We circled for at least 30 minutes to all the parking lots and pull offs before we found a spot and got on our way. The hike itself was a 1.6-mile trek uphill most of the way, but it’s paved and there are plenty of places to stop and take a break while looking across the valley to see waterfalls and amazing rock formations. If I were to do this hike again, I would have kept going another 0.2 miles and gone to Emerald Pool, but I honestly enjoyed the whole trip up and on the way back to our car I got my first real view of Half Dome. It was at this point I remembered by wallet has the topographic map of the mountain laser engraved on it, so I made sure to snap a quick pic of that too. It’s silly but it seemed fitting, and maybe someday I should send it to the maker of the wallet. Based on what I’ve read since we returned home, I believe Vernal Falls is the first stop on the way to Diving Board where Monolith was shot, so if I ever go back I need to be prepared for the 8+ mile hike carrying a 5-6 pound camera and 8x10 sheet film that weighs a pound each, all of which I will need to buy and learn how to use. So, if you have a Graflex Super Graphic just sitting in a box in your basement, let me know sometime in the next 20 years.

More to come next week about Yosemite, including the two best photos I’ve ever taken. See you soon.

Travel Blog #6: Yosemite Part 2

Travel Blog #4: King’s Canyon & Sequoia National Park