Spring photography in Yosemite (pt. 1) – April 21, 2025
El Capitan
With late April in Yosemite comes raging waterfalls, flooding rivers, and lush green foliage. This was the first of my photography visits to the valley and was a real treat to see the transformation from winter. I got to the park shortly after sunrise and couldn’t decide where to go first.
I headed to a small pond in front of Cathedral Rock hoping that the first light would illuminate it in orange, but the relatively low elevation of the peaks here meant that the high peaks to the east blocked most of the sunrise light. I looped back around and found a spot along the Merced River to photograph El Capitan which was much more fruitful. The morning light hits only the southeast face, leaving the southwest face in contrasting shadow.
Upper Yosemite Falls
The next stop was to Yosemite Falls to try and find a good reflection on the Merced. In 2023, the river swelled so much that the surrounding meadows completely flooded and allowed for awesome reflections of the trees and falls. This year, the snowpack is considerably lower so I had to settle for some meager reflections in the small pools further south.
The snowmelt isn’t at its peak yet so I’m hoping for another opportunity at this shot in a few weeks. The thing about Yosemite that keeps me coming back is that it’s possibly the only National Park I’ve been to where the best views can be had without ever stepping foot on a hiking trail. I could spend an entire day on the valley floor just driving around trying to find new angles to photograph.
Valley View
For a bit of a change, I wanted to try photographing the Milky Way over Valley View. I knew it would be quite late in the year already to try and get a shot of the galactic center in the middle of the “classic” Valley View, so I would have to improvise when I got there. As it turned out, the Milky Way was already mostly over Cathedral Rocks by the time it crested above the horizon. I changed track and figured I could try and get a shot facing southeast of just Cathedral Rocks and Bridalveil Fall.
I learned recently that my camera (the Nikon Z7ii) is apparently ISO-invariant, meaning that I could drop the ISO much lower than usual and underexpose the sky shots and still achieve a similar level of noise when bumping the exposure up in post compared to taking a properly exposed shot at a much higher ISO. The resulting photo is a stack of 32 images taken at 1600 ISO. For the foreground, I had to settle for shooting wide open at f/1.8, 640 ISO, and 300” shutter speed. I would originally take a photo during blue hour with a greater depth of field, but given how late the Milky Way rose it wasn’t practical for me to be on location earlier.
Overall, I’m super happy with how this image turned out and looking forward to applying the same techniques in the summer when I’m back in the eastern Sierra. The light pollution is lower out there and the galactic center is much more vibrant.
—Justin
