We are trying to develop a community where photographers can come and discuss nature, wildlife and pet photography related matters. We encourage you to enter the forums to discuss this article as well as to share your photographs and experiences in our forums here at NWP.

The Nature, Wildlife and Pet Photography Forum Presents:
Yosemite in Winter by Durgesh Srivastava

Edited by James Morrissey

I've been living in the San Francisco Bay Area for several years and have visited Yosemite National Park about a dozen times. Yosemite has never stopped fascinating me with its widespread natural beauty; so much so that it has become one of my favorite places in the world. This was my 3rd or 4th trip in winter; I had never seen snow on the valley floor. Since the big storm had come last week in the area, I was very hopeful of seeing tons of snow this time. Another photographer friend, Anand, joined me on the trip to the Valley for the weekend.

We started from the Bay area late in the afternoon and managed to reach the Valley by evening. The drive was long due to traffic but it went by in a jiffy - chatting about pictures we are going to take, plans for more trips, photo techniques, workflow, Galen Rowell, Thom Hogan, yada yada yada...

We woke up early to shoot the sunrise from Cathedral Beach. In my opinion, there are not many good points in Yosemite Valley to shoot sunrise from (or at least we didn't scout many). By the time light begins to hit the cliffs, the sun is at a high angle and there is less magic left in the light.

For some of these shots, we were standing in the middle of the frozen Merced River, which for us was a surreal experience. We talked about falling through and what would happen if we fell; all that made it even more surreal for us.

After breakfast, we decided to take a short walk to Lower Yosemite falls.

Gates of the Valley is a beautiful spot towards the end of Northside Drive in the valley where you can see El Capitan and Bridal Veil Falls. El Cap gets good light during the sunset. We talked about shooting the sunset from there, but soon we found out that the road to this spot was closed. I talked to a Ranger at a visitor's center and asked how to get to that spot. He shared with me his knowledge about an inconspicuous spot on the Southside drive where I could park and walk about a quarter mile to get there; it sounded very simple.

After lunch, we stopped in cook's meadow. It was completely covered in snow.

We had a couple of hours before sunset so we decided to stop at the El Cap meadow and take some shots. As soon as we got down from the car, we spotted a little puddle and El Cap's reflection.

We saw this Coyote happily roaming around there; apparently, he was looking for a place to relieve himself.

Both Anand and I became so engrossed in taking pictures of El Cap that we kind of lost track of time…realizing this, we decided to hurry to our sunset spot. What seemed very simple when the ranger was giving us directions was seemingly difficult to find. When we found the spot (or we thought we found), we parked the car and ran with our gear. We were losing good light minute by minute. Now is when I started to curse myself. Apparently, this was not the way to the Gates of the Valley spot. We were in the middle of trees, not even able to see El Cap. We hurriedly decided to just drive back and hoped to reach Sentinel Bridge before the light was completely gone. Something should be better than nothing.

That 3 miles drive seemed like an eternity. When we reached the bridge, there were at least 20+ photographers with tripods shooting the sunset. I took a couple of shots and wrapped it up.

Fairly disappointed with the sunset mishap, we went back to Curry Village. We wanted to do star trails with Half Dome in the night, so we went scouting for a good spot in the meadow in front of Curry Village.

Later that night after dinner, we headed back to the same spot. The temperature was in the teens and despite wearing multiple layers for our protection, we were feeling the chill in our bones. We were standing in the middle of the mist. To setup the tripod, we went pretty far into the meadow hoping to avoid any stray lights from the village during the exposure. Somehow we managed to setup the camera with the composition I wanted. It was shutter time. I started the exposure and moved towards the trail side, shivering and talking about how crazy we had to be to be doing this. Despite it being past 11 PM, there were just too many cars and buses going around Curry Village that have gotten into our exposure. As a result, I ended up cropping this shot. Here I also learned that my Feisol tripod is not "that" great in such cold conditions. I had a hard time folding it back as the knobs kept turning (this continued to happen the next day as well). Most of my other gear seemed to have handled the cold well.

With the plan to wake up early and head to Tunnel View, we went to sleep. This day's sunrise had not brought much good light, and I was not really expecting to get much the next day as well. Unfortunately, I was not wrong. On the way to breakfast, I spotted morning mist floating in the meadows.

After breakfast, we decided to just hang out at the visitor's center. We checked out Ansel Adams' Gallery and watched the movie "Spirit of Yosemite," which turned out be very nice.

Yesterday, when we had reached Sentinel Bridge at sunset, I met the same ranger who had told me the way to get to Gates of the Valley spot. I think luck was on my side, so I told him my sob story how I couldn't find the spot. He, very patiently, explained it to me again… This time, I was sure I got it. Since I really wanted to shoot the sunset from there, both Anand and I decided to get there a couple of hours early, just in case.

This time, we found the parking spot easily; we had gotten our lunch packed; so we parked and had a few bites and then lugged our gear. There was no clear access to get close to the river, so we had to get into a bit of snow to get there. Once there, all looked cool. El Cap was in the background, mist was forming above the water to add an interesting center, and snow covered rocks seemed a near perfect subject for a wide angle shot.

I just got a 20x30 metallic print of the last shot and it IS going on the wall :) I had recently purchased Singh Ray's Gold and Blue Polarizer which I got to use here. After looking at these shots, I think the price was justified.

Well, the sun was down, the light was gone and it was late…that meant, we were headed back home. Anand and I chatted about Life, Photography and Everything on this trip and had a good time. Thanks buddy.

Anand Sankaran has written an article for NWP called: Bristolcone Pines. You may also checkout his photographs from this trip here.

If you would like to learn more about Durgesh Srivastava and his travels, please visit his site: www.durgi.net. You may also view some of his previous photographs from Yosemite: here, here and here.

If you find that this story is interesting and would like to share it with others, please place a link to NWP from your website or blog.

If you have a story about your photographic journeys or want to write about a product you are using and would like to share please contact us.