Taken near the greenhouse…

Taken on one of our many strolls on the grounds.

The story behind the picture:

Though this is far from my best work, I’ve always had a soft spot the image, and even more for what it represents.  This is a single, solid block of granite on the way to the Mist Trail that winds up from the Yosemite Valley Floor to Vernal Falls and then Nevada Falls beyond that, eventually to connect to the John Muir Trail.

This was the first backpacking trip to Yosemite for Teresa and me. I’d previously stayed there with my parents for a few days, and  later brought my kids there the same way.  But though I had a love of the outdoors and had hiked and camped in scouting, including one twenty mile hike with a sleepover in the woods under the stars, I’d never actually backpacked and neither had Teresa.

I had taken Teresa on her first ever to Yosemite, just the year prior, as I recall.  She had always avoided going there because so many of her friends had told her how spectacular it was that she didn’t want to see the reality of it and be disappointed.  But, she went with me, and as we came out of the tunnel that reveals that classic view of the valley topped by Half Dome, she cried because it was all real and more wonderful even than she had been told.

So, shortly thereafter, we began to plan our first excursion into the Yosemite backcountry for three or four days, and our route began with a climb up the Mist Trail, a visit the last porta-potty before entering the wilderness (the out house had solar lighting, strangely), and then we left civilization truly behind for the first time in our lives.

This picture represents to me that moment of the first taste of freedom and real independence, just us and nature and whatever gear and supplies we carried on our backs.

Compositionally, this isn’t much, but I am taken with the sense of size and upward thrust, partly due to the shape of this massive stone and amplified by the tilt of the pine trees, all reaching up to a point in the sky above the material plane.  I like the color contrast as well, the rich blues and vivid greens against the slate grey monolith.

What to me is most surprising is that this image was taken on a second generation digital camera with 800×600 resolution.  Later you’ll see some really remarkable shots taken with all kinds of cheesy cameras.  Sometimes camera flaws and limitations can be used to artistic effect.

NOTE: This image and commentary are part of a new book I’m compiling of my best images that have stories attached.

You can find my existing published books of photographs, as well as my fiction an nonfiction on my author’s page on Amazon.

While living in Pine Mountain Club in the early 2000s, I was driving home from the dump (which had the best view in the valley) and spied this interesting scene of a chilled tree on a frozen landscape desperately reaching up toward a distant sun.

This stand of elegant straw flowers was along the dirt path that ran down the hill from the B&B we were staying at to the Rogue River below.

Taken along the banks, down the hilll from the B&B we stayed at while exploring Oregon before eventually moving there.

On our way to Yosemite with our friend, Bob, along the Eastern Sierra, we were gifted with a rich twilight and a touch of alpenglow above the dessert.

Our brand new apartment complex bordered farmland in West Salem. We had a corner unit so we could look out over the wilds in two direction in this strange interface between modern city and rural life.

Often I would find photographic compositions presenting themselves through our livingroom window, such as this image of a bird, unfettered, and in flight to wherever its fancy called.

The Mist Trail that winds up stone stairs carved in the mother rock passes Vernal Falls to connect with other back country trails at the top of Nevada Falls. Along the narrow craggy canyon, mammoth rock walls of single giant blocks of granite stand guard.

Taken in the early 2000s during the first backpacking trip Teresa and I made into the Yosemite wilderness.

Majestic Yosemite Falls, seen from across the valley floor as it might have appeared when visitors first arrived at Yosemite. 

Scroll down for the story behind the photograph… 

Prints, coffee mugs, phone covers, etc. available at: 

https://www.zazzle.com/yosemite_falls_in_winter_photo_print-190769289104571439

The story behind the photograph: 

This was a difficult shot to frame.  The camera position was covered in underbrush and swampy/muddy as well.  I only had a normal lens, but from a nice dry spot, it wasn’t wide enough to capture the anchor points I wanted at the corners nor to include both the left and right edge points to best effect.  I kept backing up into the marsh trying to get it all in, but right behind me was a thick stand of saplings that prevented me from going further back, and if I went behind them, they would show up  in the frame and ruin the composition.  So, I pushed my back into the bramble of trees as far as I could and eked out just enough extra distance to get just the framing I wanted with nary a centimeter to spare.  Worth the effort.

Composition Notes:

The crossed logs on the bottom provide a foundation for the shot, grounding it.

The grass on the very bottom makes for an edge.

The bright leafless bushes in the mid-right fill what would have been negative space on the rack face, and counteracts that dark area of the background, which is in shadow.  Their brightness also draws the eye and provide a diagonal balance to the Falls themselves, which are not only on the left, but facing left as well.  That is one of my favorite parts of the composition as an exercise – to put all the weight visually in the upper left, then draw it back into balance using brightness on the mid-right.

The reflection of the bushes also breaks up the darkness of the water and further balances the shot toward the right.

In the upper right corner, a few leafless branches break up the monotony of the sky and provide an anchor to complete the balance of the photograph.

The image is split vertically into two halves, left and right, for symmetry, with the highest point of the mountain in near center, running down through the dividing line between the dark tress and bushes on the left and the right ones on the right, then ending at the roots of the fallen log at the bottom.  Again, these are all elements used to balance the top-left-heavy positioning of the Falls,

The point is that they Falls could have been shot in a way to center them or have them on the right so they faced into the frame, but by putting them in this unusual position and then balancing with so many elements, the dynamics of the image are ratcheted up creating a much more energetic and compelling.

I’ll end with a quick note about dividing a shot into thirds, both horizontally and vertically – a compositional trick first documented by the ancient Greeks.

In this shot, notice the vertical has three layers, like a parfait.  The top is the rocky mountain, the middle is the band of bushes, and the bottom is the water.  The Greeks discovered that when images are divided in threes, it is pleasing to the eye.

Now take a look at the horizontal thirds.  The left third follows down the waterfall through the one bright conifer in the background and continues through the highest tip of one of the bright branches.

The right one third begins in the crack to the right of the peak of the mountain.  Notice that if you run a line down the middle of the frame from top to bottom beginning at the highest peak, the waterfall on the left and the crack on the right are almost identical in their downward line.  They are also equidistance from the center, and so the right one third begins with the crack in symmetry to the Falls, runs down through the center of the bright bushes and terminates in the roots of the log at the bottom.

Now you might think that I compose a shot purely from this technical and intellection approach.  Not at all.  If I did that, my work would be sterile and lack any passion.

Here is my technique:

I walk out on photo expeditions.  I see a subject of interest.  I stop and begin to walk around the area, left/right, forward/back until I zero in on the best general location from which to capture it, just by sensing how powerful each position is, almost as if I was triangulating to find the location of a radio signal.

Once I have my general spot, I begin to frame the shot.  I do this by now moving the camera left/right and up/down until the power is greatest.

Finally, I consider the image in the viewfinder and ask myself what it is that makes that shot powerful?  And then I look toward symmetry, the rule of thirds, light and dark areas, negative space, foreground background, corners, edges, diagonal lines, and anchor points.

I identify these and then fine tune my framing until I can maximize the power of as many of them as possible, always keeping in mind that the overall shot is greater than the sum of its parts, and sometimes one must sacrifice a little on some of the individual compositional elements to the benefit of the image as a whole.

And that, in a nutshell, is a good introduction to photographic composition.