Skip to main content

Day 4: Hiking in the Park

Today started at 4:30 AM so we could beat the crowds into the park and ensure we had a parking space. We passed through the gate around 6:30 AM (it is an hour drive from the hotel), and took the road into Yosemite Valley.  We stopped a few times along the road to take a few pictures of El Capitan and Bridalveil Falls in the early morning light, but our goal was the parking lot.  We arrived early enough we had our choice of spots, since the lot was empty, so got one close to the exit and main paths.  

 We started our walking adventure by following signs for the visitor center and Yosemite Falls.  The visitor center did not open till, 9 AM so we continued on to the falls. We brought MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) with us for breakfast, good thing because several of the restaurants didn’t open till 7:00 AM.  The walk to the falls was fairly short, and the lower viewing area had very few people at it, which was good for pictures.  From there were continued around the waterfall path up to the Mirror Lake path.  The trail was supposed to be about 4 miles but seemed longer, because we took the trail which went up and down instead of the flat road out to it.  I was actually disappointed by Mirror Lake, because I was expecting more water.  But due to the extended drought, there was very little water and the lake is slowly turning into marsh and meadow.  From there we hiked back to the visitor center area.  On the hike back we stopped at the deli to grab lunch. After eating and checking out the visitor center, we took the valley bus over to the Curry Village area to hike part of the John Muir trail to Vernal Falls.

Yosemite Falls (Cell Phone)

The trail to the base of Vernal Falls is very deceiving, it starts out level and transitions to a gradual incline; then right when you think this isn’t bad it starts a steep uphill.  We only hiked the trail to the viewing area, which was .8 miles uphill and decided not to hike the remaining .6 miles up to very top of the falls.  After then we decided to call it a day, so hiked down the hill to the valley bus station to take the bus back to the parking area.  We didn’t feel like hike the two mile to the parking lot.  From there we headed out of the park making a few picture stops along the way.

Vernal Falls (Cell Phone)

 Today was a good day (even if I forgot my Fit Bit to track my steps), it was sunny and comfortable temperature after the morning chill wore off.  Tomorrow we will not be getting up as early and rain is expected, which makes me sad.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Pumpkin Barron

On October 12th, I had the pleasure of working with the marvelous SunnyRae .   The general theme for the shoot was pumpkins but with coordination on outfits with SunnyRae theme evolved into official portraits of an 18 th century Pumpkin Baron. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 Westcott Strobe 1 rectangular soft box 1 strip box 1 6x6 silver reflector 2 C-stands 1 light stand Boom arm Color checker clamps Sandbags Backdrop stand Rough canvas backdrop Pumpkins Rough canvas drop cloth Flowers Old trunk Books Letters Wooden crate Fake leaves Chair Tri-level plant stand     The set up I wanted to keep this set up a bit rustic yet give the feel of staged aristocratic painting of the time.  I started with a plain rough canvas backdrop then placed an ol...
Post a Comment
Read more

Night Queen

On September 28th, I did a session with May.   This session’s theme was designed around a Halloween headpiece I made a couple of years ago but never got to shoot.   The vibe of the overall shoot was dark queen. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 rectangular soft boxes grids 2 C-stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Fuzzy grey backdrop Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps 2 trilevel plant stands Fake candles Goblets Fake flowers Black fabric Silver fabric Large Styrofoam block Dowel Rods Skulls Fake moss Dry ice   The set up I tried to keep this setup simple in nature.  I started with the base of a fuzzy grey backdrop to which I added a “throne” made from a large Styrofoam block, some dowel rods, and a piece of black fabric.  To that I added two flower pot hol...
Post a Comment
Read more

Belle Island with Central VA Cosplayers

On October 19 th I drove down to Richmond, VA to attend a Central VA Cosplay Photoshoot meetup on October 20 th at Belle Island.   I wanted to go to this event because it was in an interesting location, and I wanted to meet some new cosplayers.   For this session I used: Canon R6 2 Speed light Trigger 1 Light stands 24 - 105mm lens Gels Camera Settings: For this shoot, I was transitioning back and forth between being inside an old, dark, abandoned building to bright, sunny woods.  Due to the transitions, my settings varied greatly.  I mostly shot at ISO 100 except for when I accidently bumped the nob to “Auto” and didn’t notice, so I also took shots at ISO 2500, 3200, 4000, and 6400.  The shots at the high ISO actually look fairly decent, and not as grainy as one would expect.  My shutter varied between 1/100s to 1/250s with the most common shutter speed being 1/250s.  My aperture varied between F5 to F11 with the most common ap...
Post a Comment
Read more