Yosemite Winter Workshop

Yosemite in the Winter!

Ah, fresh snow......the valley-floor draped in a white blanket of new-fallen flakes. Tree branches bending under the weight of the snow, delicately clinging to the pine needles. Sounds wonderful....but, it certainly doesn't describe the conditions we experienced last weekend at this famous national park. Our weather pattern was clear, calm and sunny. Definitely NOT what we were expecting.

Exactly one year ago we nailed it! New snow on the first morning. Followed by 2 days of some of the most amazing, right- in-your-face, winter classics.

But, this year was going to be a scramble. Any good images we were to get would have to be searched out, and carefully executed. A real test of our ingenuity and creativity. Which was quite a change...especially here...in YOSEMITE! There have been times here, when the camera accidently fired while hiking, and the resulting picture was quite usable!

No snow, bare trees and low water levels. At least the crowds were down, and there wasn't the concern of having unwanted tourists in the background for every shot. Well, that's the bad news. The good news is we're in Yosemite...and even in these tough conditions it's still an amazingly beautiful place to shoot. Just not the same classic images we had expected.

This shot, for example, was from January of 2006. Taken from Swinging Bridge, and shooting downstream on the Merced River. A real no-

brainer...everywhere you looked was a shot just screaming-out to be taken.

2007, however was going to be the year of reflections, and ice-crystals. Direct sunlight on the base of the waterfalls, creating wispy rainbows. Macro shots of frost-covered leaves and ferns. Frozen oak leaves, encrusted in a thick slab of clear ice. We were certainly forced to look a little harder, and come up with some original trophy images.

We were out shooting before sunrise, and got a shot of the full moon, just as it snuck behind the cliff near Yosemite Lodge parking area. The contrast between the bright moon and the dark sky was too great to shoot the ACTUAL moon itself......this is just a hint of the halation as it lightens up the peripheral area. Exposure was 5 seconds at f/8. ISO was set at 200, and the white balance at Tungsten to enhance the already deep blue, eastern sky.

And, just a few minutes later, now facing east, we could see a hint of the soon-to-be sunrise. A few clouds provided a nice surface for the light pink glow. The exposure had radically changed in these few minutes. Now, it was only one second at f/8 with the white balance set for Daylight. If we'd kept it set for Tungsten, the red in the clouds would have shifted too much.

Right after breakfast, we took a hike over to the base of Lower Yosemite Falls. The overall water volume was low...but, still plenty of mist and vapor as the stream cascaded over the cliff, and splashed against the rocks at the base. As soon as the first direct rays of the sunlight hit that specific area....Wow! This rainbow effect went on for at least 45 minutes. Constantly changing as the sun moved higher in the sky, and the volume of water increased with the rising temperatures.

The early morning shade in this very deep valley keeps the temperatures cold for a good part of the day. Even at 10 am there was still a nice frosty coating to these miniature ferns. They were shot with a Tamron 180mm Macro lens, using a tripod as the branch layed on the forest floor, right on the bank of the Merced River. White balance was set to the Shady pre-set, initially....however, this still wasn't enough for the extremely high quantity of UV. High elevation and deep shade are a good recipe for excessive blue. No problem, however. A couple of seconds was all it took to come up with a CUSTOM white-balance using the Expo Disc, and we nailed the colors perfectly.

Ravens seem to be everywhere in the valley. And especially if you look like you may be a source of food! This guy had flown in and landed right near the car while we were shooting El Capitan.

I quickly threw on the 200-500mm zoom and powered up the flash to help light up the dark feathers. But, from over 50 feet away, the on-camera flash was no match for the deep black values of this guy.

It just took about a minute to attach the "Flash Extender" to the flash unit on-camera.....and the output was increased by 3 stops. This gizmo was invented by Walt Anderson, and it's amazing. It uses a fresnel lens to concentrate the beam, and increase the amount of light that hits the subject. And, as long as you're shooting with a pretty long lens, there's no visible light fall-off (vignetting) at the edges. It certainly saved this image. If you're shooting with one of the APS size sensors, a 200mm is all you need......and you'll be able to take full advantage of this remarkable, and inexpensive accessory.

For the next demo, we posed Justine in front of a dramatic backdrop of Yosemite Falls and the granite cliffs. However, we were ALL standing in some pretty deep shade. Knowing that there was absolutely nothing I could do to change the amount of light in the background, the only option was to use a flash-fill technique, to bring the brightness level UP on Justine, and for a split second, match the sunlit falls.


The first image in this series clearly demonstrates what happens when your main subject, that is 4 stops under the background brightness level, is included in the picture ....and the overall exposure is set for the highlights...or, in this case the sunny area. There's absolutely nothing recorded here. Think of it this way...at 4 stops under-exposed, she's receiving 1/16th the amount of light as the background!



And this next image is very easily improved by the addition of an off-camera flash unit, used to bring up the brightness level to match the background. Using the magic of a tethered TTL flash, off to my left, and high, we were able to add a very nice 3-D look to this outdoor portrait.



And, for this final version I used the Nik Color Efex 2.0 filter kit. It's a plug-in for Photoshop, and there's a ton of options. This was achieved with the B&W conversion filter....very simply converted the entire image to a nice black and white version, and then painted the color back in!