Landscape

Valley View Sunrise

Homework having been done earlier in the evening before, we drove to Valley View to find this place surprisingly empty and not having to jostle for spots. Even if there were other photographers it wouldn’t have mattered since we knew exactly where we were going to shoot from. I took a more conservative spot and not in the Merced River which would make for some interesting compositions. The conservative spot was from on top of a massive log that was washed ashore. Wisanu told me that the last time he visited this spot that tree was blocking the flow of the water in the middle.

The idea was to capture the sun peaking over on the side of the towering El Capitan, flanked on the right by the skyscraping twin Cathedral Rocks and Spires.


I should have perhaps used a circular polarizer filter to cut out some of the glare in the water but I was too lazy to do that. Or may be I was numb after a long night of astrophotography. I seldom use filters anyway for landscape photography particularly Neutral Density filters which at one point of time, I used to think were a must for every landscape photographer. No, they are not! You just shoot when the light is right.

Also, I did not want anything to come between the sunstar and the warm morning sunlight hitting the vegetation and to that extent, I believe I succeeded. I have not seen a picture similar to this on Flickr or 500px so this might be a unique composition with the sunrise from this angle. I saw one image with the sun coming nearly where you see the tree branch going out of the frame on the top right. If that is true, it goes to prove that even very popular locations can yield unique compositions.

Cathedral PeaksEl CapitanLightLogsNationalSpiresYosemitegrassparkriverrockssunsunlightsunrisesunstartrees