Yosemite

I was able to stop in Yosemite for part of a day on my return from San Leandro. My timing was not good as it was in the morning and the sun comes up in the East but the best photo locations wanted the sun in the West. Rather than spend the whole day I had to move on as I needed to get some work done on Monday. The day was Saturday so I needed a little travel time.

When I drove into the park the scenery was really nice with lots of trees and wining roads. So I took this shot along the road.

Since this was October it is the dry season and it hasn’t rained in a while so all the waterfalls were very dry or completely dry.

I took a photo of Bridalveil falls and you can see just a trickle of water coming down. Yellowstone falls were completely dry. Spring is the best time to visit here because of the snow melt and fresh greenery.

Yosemite Falls

Bridalveil Falls

I couldn’t pass up a good shot of El Capitan as it was the only thing in decent light.

El Capitan

After driving around and checking things out I stopped by the bridge over the Merced river to try get a photo of Half Dome. The lighting was bad as it came in from behind the face leaving the face in shadow so I took 5 photo’s all bracketed one stop apart and made this HDR image. It came out all right to my surprise.

Half Dome

On the way out of the valley I stopped at the tunnel view overlook and took this photo. Again, all these photo’s would have been better later in the day when the sun lights up the face of Half Dome and the valley lights up but that’s how it works.

Tunnel View Overlook