Roadtrip Images

Yosemite in the winter is a magical place. And you don’t need blue skies and sunshine either.

Yosemite National Park has long been a favorite of mine. I’ve been shooting here for 15+ years and until just a few years ago with large format film. I wrote about that here and here. My favorite time to go by far is winter. Winter is a quieter time in Yosemite. The crowds of summer are long gone and the Park seems to have a more relaxed vibe. Summer here can be very hectic and stressful. There is one exception however and that is the two weeks around the Firefall phenomenon at the the end of February. But that’s for a different post.

Yosemite has received a lot of snow this season and that’s when the Park is at its best. A crisp sunny morning right after a significant snowfall is a photo experience not soon forgotten. You have to work quickly though since the sun melts the snow off the trees pretty fast. Thankfully, that’s not the only condition to shoot in. Another wonderful scene is during the snowfall itself. Often there will be fog throughout the valley while it’s snowing and that can make for some moody low contrast images. Especially if the mountains are peeking through the fog.

The image above is of the Cathedral Group taken from El Capitan Bridge. The Merced River serves as a nice leading line into the image. The snow covered pine trees on both river banks are strong framing elements that further lead your eye into the photograph. The flat lighting with the fog obscuring the mountain works well with the snow covered trees. The dark tree trunks provide the contrasting tones for this image. Working with flat lighting can be challenging. You have to find the right subjects. Ones that will benefit from the very soft effects of the fog. Minimizing the amount of sky in the image helps especially if it has no texture to it.

Nikon D850 with Nikkor 16-35mm @ 16mm. f/11 at 1/50 sec. ISO 64

The next image below is of some oak trees in a meadow not far from the first photograph. I’ve seen images of these oaks in the snow before from the likes of Ansel Adams, John Sexton and Ray McSavaney. They need a snowy, foggy scene to make them look best. So when we got those conditions during our visit I knew I wanted to go have a look.

The sides of the tree trunks tend to get coated with snow and the contrast between the light and dark tones really stand out. The fog helps to isolate the trees and make them stand out against the background. It took awhile to get a composition that feels visually balanced and excludes some of the distracting foreground elements.

Nikon D850 with Nikkor 24-70mm @ 70mm. f/11 at 1/25 sec. ISO 31

This last image is of the Cathedral Rocks again but from a different viewpoint. We had received a significant amount of rain in the Valley prior to the snowstorm and so this pond had filled pretty high. It caught my eye as we drove by so I looked for a place to pull off and park. Fortunately the snow around the pond wasn’t tracked up yet. I made several different compositions but settled on this one. The pond made for some nice reflections. I placed the large tree in the midground on the left third. It provides some dark contrast to the very white scene. The sky didn’t have much texture so I didn’t include very much. I also liked the fog hanging on the tips of the mountains as it created some nice moody atmosphere.

Nikon D850 with Nikkor 16-35mm @22mm. f/11 at 1/25 sec. ISO 64

Visiting Yosemite is always good. Some visits are better than others but they’re all good. Winter works well for us as we can get our “snow fix” and stay nearby in El Portal with the rig. This keeps the rig out of the snow without having to drive too far each day into the Park. On this visit we got a ton of snow and came away with a number of “keepers”. I’ll be sharing some of those in the next post.

As always, you can see higher resolution images on our Facebook page. Please give us a like while you’re there.