Yosemite Archives - Scott Jones

Tag: Yosemite

So Close and Yet So Far

I took one more trip to Yosemite on Sunday night because of the holiday and the fect that I’ll soon start traveling for the MotoGP season. I figured I might get one more opportunity to capture Horsetail Fall from a different perspective, hoping that the sun’s arc hadn’t passed beyond the narrow range required to […]

A Tunnel View Story

Ansel Adams said famously, “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” Few spots I’ve visited make this as plain and as simple at the equally famous Tunnel View that looks over Yosemite Valley. As a fellow photographer said yesterday morning, “This shot has everything.”

The Magic of Science

For two weeks each February, the sun’s arc throws light on Horsetail Fall in a certain way. When the conditions are correct, the fall glows orange against the dark granite of El Capitan’s eastern face. This sight is a common subject for Yosemite photographers, and has been since Galen Rowell made the first color photograph […]

Half Dome Conquered

On my recent photo trip to Yosemite with friends Tyler, John and Suad, I got the idea to hike to the top of Half Dome, as more or less a Because It’s There thing. My wife, L and I had recently watched a Discover TV series about an expedition on Everest, and while that multi-month […]

Going Wide

A friend on Facebook just asked me for advice about wide angle lenses, and rather than relay what I know to another individual, I thought I’d post here for him and anyone else who’d like to hear my thoughts. My experience is based on having owned the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF-S Nikkor Wide Angle […]

When All Else Fails…

You can always rely on Tunnel View for a great Yosemite photo, right? Well, not always, as it turns out. Even the perspective on Yosemite Valley that Tunnel View offers can be rendered fairly un-photogenic by bad light. Sorry, but even this old faithful spot is subject to the same weakness as every other spot […]

Cathedral Rocks

This image of Cathedral Rocks in Yosemite Valley is interesting to me because it has become one of my favorite photographs of the trip, and I almost didn’t bother to get out of the car to take it. We had spent the morning camped on the shore of the Merced River, waiting for the sunlight […]

From Salt Lake to Mono Lake

Going back in time a bit, here is a post I wrote as we arrived in Yosemite on June 7th. Trading Armco and asphalt and granite and waterfalls, I’ve moved from the racetrack to Yosemite for the week. The late summer and recent snows mean that the waterfalls in the valley should be in full […]

Going for the Silver

It’s quite an odd experience to go to Yosemite for the purpose of making photographs. Everywhere you go, whether in direct sunlight or in the shade of an iconic granite structure, you are under the shadow of Ansel Adams. I know of no photographer who has staked such a claim on a place as Mr. […]

Milky Way over Mono Lake

A proper landscape photo trip is something like a marathon, an endurance test to determine how badly you want the chance for another good image. This test is easier to pass at the beginning of the tip, before consecutive nights of 3-4 hours of sleep have caught up with you.