F/8 And Be There  …… hopefully and eventually

It simply means I had photo gear and I was there. Reduced to its basics it would seem that easy and at times it feels that way but as we all know in all reality it is not! Like life itself, the more you do something the more instinctive it becomes, and therefore it gets easier. The danger here is that I can stop thinking or loose the concentration. Years ago I had a very wise and thoughtful instructor that would begin a lot of sentences with “hopefully” or “eventually”. I came to understand that these two thoughts were important. Very much so!

In the image of the Chapel in Yosemite Valley while out most of the day in a snow storm I knew immediately where I wanted to be if and when enough light became available. John Muir asked why you’d build a cathedral in a valley that was already a cathedral and I’ve always thought of it this way. The valley itself always seem to take precedence over the chapel. The conditions just never right.

As spectacular a setting as it is, I’ve been bothered when I’ve tried to photograph it by a number of problems. However I  have always been confident that Hopefully I’d see it the way I envisioned it someday Eventually. It’s the -and be there- part.

Here were the problems to solve as I saw them. The granite cliff is some 3,000 feet above the chapel and if you widen the composition you loose the perspective almost completely. If you tighten the composition considerably the plywood front door detail becomes quite unattractive and the tree next to it uninteresting. The beautiful tree behind the chapel is bare in the winter and if the direct light is of equal intensity on the entire composition everything goes flat. Even if the trees are covered with snow as soon as the direct sunlight hits them it’s gone. Believe me I have dozens of frames from many years to prove this!

I’ve found that being out there instead of waiting for clearing weather and then making a dash is in most cases unproductive. I’ve also proved this at this exact spot!

Outfitted for the wet and cold I setup and waited for the snow to stop. I knew the sunlight that I hoped for might break as I could see clearing in the west. I covered my gear on the tripod with a simple plastic bag.  I had most of what I wanted but knew it now all depended on the granite behind to be dark and it happened.

When the light hit it didn’t last long! I moved quickly attaching a Singh-Ray ColorCombo to both cut the glare and deepen the color and glow of the beautiful wood along with the green of the tree on the left. Then taking an exposure for the face of the chapel I opened up a full stop and a half to insure I kept the snow white but still hold detail. In the next frame used here I opened another stop and used a Singh-Ray graduated neutral density filter to hold the light of the tree behind and bring up mid-tone color of the face of the chapel. The result is the tree sparkles like fine crystal!

In the end it wasn’t simple or easy but it all boiled down once again to an F/8 And Be There thing.