Like everyone else here, I have not been able to get out and shoot so I am going through older images and sharing some of my fond memories of trips I’ve taken over the last couple of years. This image was from a trip in 2017 to Yosemite Valley during a winter storm. The fact that I had to put chains on to reach the park was well worth the effort although I hadn’t put chains on in more than 20 years. I was sitting just off the side of the road, cold and wet, finger tips freezing while trying to read the instructions on a little white slip of paper for chain installation. After about 2 minutes the paper became wet and was utterly worthless. However, there were dozens of other cars pulled over and a nice guy came over and helped me out if I would help him out.
The trip was worth all of the discomfort of being wet and cold for 3 days. I saw only a very brief moment where the sun tried to break through. Other than those very brief moments I was in a blowing sideways snow storm for 3 straight days which made for some of my favorite images ever. This is one of those images. The sun didn’t actually come out but it sure tried hard and it painted a strip of the clouds a soft orange color for about 15 seconds before it was gone forever. This was shot was taken in Cooks meadow in the middle of the day. Half Dome is directly behind this old valley floor oak but was not visible for this image. I will never forget this image as the guy I was standing next to in these clumps of snow covered grass dislocated his knee while trying to move to a new location. The snow was about 8 inches above our knees and making any sudden movements other than pulling your leg straight up would result in you falling over. I fell 3 times but I never twisted while trying to pull my leg up. We called the park medics who arrived about 10 minutes later and they proceeded to put his knee back in place. It sure sounded painful. During these few moments as I was holding this guy in place so he wouldn’t move I missed some of the most beautiful opportunities to shoot half dome with this golden light however I was able to capture some images a few minutes later without the golden light which I’ll share next.
AS always, thanks so much for always guiding me towards making my images better with each post.
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Pertinent technical details or techniques:
D850, 24-120mm, SIO 125, 35mm, 1/13 @ f/11
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Single shot
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Yosemite can have such wonderful light. I like the blue and brown combination you often find there in the winter. Very nice image. Sometimes the lens correction feature will straighten our the horizon like this. Other times the horizon is actually like this.
Quite a story to go with this image! It’s beautiful how these stay attached to an image whenever the photographer sees it again. I really like the like snow on the fg rocks, and of course the snow covered trees. The glow in the sky goes well together with the last leaves on the trees on the left. A beautiful scene!
Hi @David_Haynes, really good shot. I really like FG, the snow semplified a lot and added more interest to the image. I also like how you processed the shot. Thanks for sharing.
This is a sweet image David. I love the luminosity you achieved with your processing here. The light and color in the sky is gorgeous, and I also like the luminosity in the snow, it has the character of reflected light. My only nit are the two sets of snow covered rocks in the center that merge withe frame edge, I wish there was a bit more breathing room below them. Perhaps you have that in the raw file.
Beautiful image, David. The sky is such a treat for the eyes with that glow in it, and you have such pure whites in this. Great texture in the snow also. I didn’t notice the nit that Ed mentioned until he mentioned it, and if you don’t have any additional room at the bottom you can always play with the clone stamp and probably fix that pretty easily. This is not really a nit, but I wish you had moved over a few feet to the left when composing this so the open area at the bottom would have been a bit more balanced, or you could crop some off the right side perhaps in help with that. Or, you could just leave it as it is! Great shot.
Thanks for you comment Bill. I wish I could have moved to left a little bit but that’s where the guy was standing that dislocated his knee. There were about 20 photographers packed on top of these buried clumps of grass and nobody could move more than a few inches. One wrong step and you’d be up to your crotch in snow and a boot full of water beneath. Also, I don’t have any more room along the bottom. This was pretty much full frame with a little bit cut off both sides. I agree that the little clumps of snow along the bottom are bothersome. I will try and remove those. Thanks for the suggestion.
I have a question for anyone that wants to help me out. I see posts where there is a reply back to everyone who has commented on the post using their @ names. How does one go about doing that? Thanks in advance.
Thanks you for your comments @Ed_McGuirk, @Igor_Doncov, @masdamb, @Ron_Jansen. @Bill_Chambers was kind enough to share how to reply all with the @ sign in the reply. To answer your questions, I had no more room along the bottom so I will have to clone out the snow covered grasses on the very edge of the bottom and I also had no room to move to left a little bit as that’s where the poor fellow that dislocated his knee was standing and we tried to move as little as possible due to the poor footing. Igor, I will try and straighten the horizon but as you say I think this one is just like that. Thanks again!
@David_Haynes, I just wanted to play (bored as hell), so I added a little canvas to the bottom and tried to remedy the cut-off rocks. If this was my image, I wouldn’t have wasted my time doing it because your image looks great as it is. Again, I was BORED and just wanted to practice to see if I could do it. Don’t really know if it’s an improvement, but it certainly wouldn’t be worth the time and effort if you weren’t just horribly bored.
