28 April 2024: Yosemite Valley

Since we got into the park around noon and setup camp quickly. We took advantage of the great afternoon light and drove through Yosemite Valley. Because it was the last day of the free National Park entry week, Yosemite Valley had a lot of visitors.
Gary and I were anxious to get out and scout Yosemite Valley. The light was good and so were the clouds – the sun ducked behind large clouds frequently so the exposure changed quickly. Light on the valley walls changed every few minutes so if the light wasn’t good, I just waited several minutes for it to change. With this mottled, late afternoon light and limited color range, I found processing these late afternoon images as black&white to work particularly well. Black&white Yosemite photos are always a homage to Ansel Adams to me. He set the standard and his images are some of my favorite landscape photographs.