Studio 47 Photography Photo Blog

Took almost a whole week off from blogging, its been a little crazy as I had to get ready for a shoot this past weekend and still recovering.

Jumping back into it, I wanted to revisit Gates of the Valley aka Valley View at least one more time.

Maybe I saved the best for last, we’ll see.  As it turns out this shot was taken around lunch time.

We had stopped at the Valley View turn out quite a few times during the day to try out different light as the sun moved down the valley.

Even though it was just shy of high-noon, the sun was was pretty low in the sky due to winter time so the light was still pretty decent.

In fact, because of the low angle of the sun, the valley was pretty much in shadow resulting in some interesting contrasts.

Again the low hanging fog was just enough to add a little drama to the image.  In fact, I think the fog almost gives it a sort of painting feel to it, like its not real.

But trust me if I painted this it would definitely look more like a Pollack piece.

This was another shot where I really wanted to pull in the Merced River in the foreground and use it for the reflection.

The problem was that the river was running pretty good leaving very few places of calm water where the reflection worked.

There was a very small sheltered section, maybe 10 feet by 10 feet on the near bank.

Someone once told me, that as a photographer, if someone isn’t staring at you and wondering what the hell you were doing while taking a picture, you probably weren’t trying hard enough.

So in that spirit, there I was, lying in the snow on the edge of the river holding the camera a couple inches off of the water to try and maximize the coverage and reflection of that tiny patch of serenity in the water.

This shot was taken with circular polarizing filter to get the sky to pop.  I think this was one of my favorite shots from Yosemite.

I hope you enjoy as well.

Canon 5d Mk II, ISO 400, Canon 16-35L MkII @ 19 mm, f8, 1/125 sec., CPL filter