Photography by Tim Rucci: Yosemite National Park

#7D_1001 El Capitan and Cathedral Rocks at night

I'll start off with a my favorite night time Yosemite image, which was photographed from the area called gates of the valley. It is a small turnout off northside drive and offers a great view of both El Capitan and Cathedral rocks. The image above is a 30 second exposure that was taken in near total darkness at f4, iso 200 with a 17mm lens. Due to the long exposure, the moving water creates a nice blur as it flows over the rocks, and the stars in the sky are just beginning to form star trails. Because there was no moon, an exposure this long was necessary to get enough light on the mountains.
The next image is taken from the same exact spot but looking a little more to the right at Cathedral Rocks. You can see the blur of headlights and tail lights from cars passing on the road in the distance, and also rocks lit in the river from headlights of cars pulling into a parking area behind me. The light on the rocks was unintentional, but I could not control it.

#7D_998 - Cathedral Rocks at Night

The following evening we were photographing Half Dome from the Sentinel Bridge and this was the first time I used a graduated neutral density filter. It worked wonders at equalizing the bright light in the sky so that I could get a decent exposure of both the foreground and background, without blowing out highlights.

#7D_ 1271 - Half Dome

Had I done a little more investigating on filters prior to this trip, I could have saved myself a lot of grief the first couple days we were there. The filter proved invaluable in many different situations and made it a lot easier to get photos that would have been impossible to capture without it.

Where I had been bracketing exposures the first couple days in situations where the light was too harsh, I found myself wanting to go back to places I had been and re-shoot.

As I had said earlier, there was not much water flow in any of the falls this time of the year, so it was not a priority to photograph them. I did however, photograph several of the falls that were visible either from the road, or after just a short hike.

Although these are not very good photos, I am including them just to show what was there. I do plan to return sometime in the summer so that I can get photos of the falls with more water flow, and also take the longer hikes required to photograph Vernal Falls and Nevada Falls.

#N110753 - Bridalveil Falls (photographed from the tunnel on Hwy 41)

#N110494 - Upper Yosemite Falls

#7D_747 - Lower Yosemite Falls

We finally drove up to Glacier Point, which is about an hours drive from the valley floor, depending on where you start. It was along this drive that I showed the coyote photo in the previous post. It's a long and winding road climbing several thousand feet, but offers spectacular views of the valley once you get to the top. The following images show the observation area as well as a view of the valley.