It’s become a carnival at times. It seems the circus is in town. It has everything but the hot dog stand and barbecue porch. Well, at least for now. They have even in the last couple of years blocked off lanes for parking!
It used to be that people that knew of the Yosemite valley phenomenon that is Horsetail Fall in February did so by viewing photographs or heard stories. Where is it was the question and when and where do I see it from? There was always the story of Galen Rowell running down the road to capture it. It was a mystery of a long while!
For a lot of us it was always a “someday” photographic opportunity.
Today it’s hard to believe what has happened to this little known, well hidden secret. Now it is an annual pilgrimage to Yosemite valley and a social roundup of your closest couple of thousand photographers, sightseers and onlookers and if you do it year after year, friends!
Most of have learned over the years that Horsetail Fall has first to be a fall, meaning that the snow pack has to be good and the runoff adequate in late winter to produce a waterfall. The west side of El Capitain is the location and with a window of only a week plus for the sun to light the possible waterfall, which means a clear afternoon in the western sky.
Not often do all these come together but in the last fifteen years or so for me it doesn’t seem to effect the aforementioned crowds in the least. They increase in size every year, and like I’ve said, it’s a carnival!
This is was one of the best in quite sometime. The fall had very good water flow and the light was simply a treat! On one of the afternoon shoots they gathered throng broke out in spontaneous applause as the magnificent light ebbed after sunset. It didn’t really matter if you photographed it or just filled the memory card between your ears. This was a February to remember!
To get the exposure right I metered off the highlight and opened up 2/3 to 1- 1/3 stops using a Singh-Ray ColorCombo polarizer. I then made numerous exposures using both a Singh-Ray neutral density 3 and 4 stop soft filter at different angles to hold the brilliance of the water and move the shadowed trees up more than a full stop allowing much needed detail instead of silhouette.
Canon 5Dsr, Canon 70-200 2.8 IS, Gitzo tripod, Acratech ballhead and leveling base, and the a fore mentioned Singh-Ray filters.
