After our all too brief stay in San Fran, we hired a car and drove onto the next leg of our trip – Yosemite. It was a little hair-raising negotiating our way out of downtown SF in a car whose steering wheel was located on the left-hand side of the vehicle and then drive confidently on the right hand side of the road but, obviously, when we made it unscathed. By the time we reached our accommodation in El Portal (5 minutes drive from the park entrance) it was already dark so the Yosemite landscape remained a present waiting to be unwrapped until the following morning. And, what a present to open. I’d heard the stories – ant sized climbers clinging to the face of El Capitan, soaring granite formations… Nothing really prepares you though. The scale of these rock formations are astounding and no photographs can do them justice. I don’t know, it was very humbling indeed and I’m still lost for words really; even now.
Perhaps you can help me out; if you’ve ever visited Yosemite – or would love to visit in the future – I’d dearly love to hear some of your thoughts or how you felt in the comments below. Thanks heaps everyone.
Canon 7D | EF 24-105L; EFS 10-22; EF 70-200L | Handheld
Above: Half-dome
Above: That would be a woodpecker 🙂
Distan Bach Photography Blog 
Great selection of shots!
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Cheers George, much appreciated and thanks so much for visiting.
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Ridiculous gallery of captures!
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Too kind Kurt, thank you very much. I can’t take all the credit though; Mother Nature played a small hand in it too 😉
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Awesome photos. You capture the things I see while hiking, yet don’t have the skill or equipment to photograph. Beautiful!
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Thank you for your kind and generous words Janet. Really appreciated. Hope you can stop by again.
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Beautiful Photos! I hope to road trip through California next year-heading in the same direction! Must visit the park!
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Thanks heaps. If our experience is anything to go by, you guys will have a ball. If you can, try to visit Yosemite in spring. You should see all the waterfalls flowing and of course the flowers. Unfortunately, because it has been so dry and we were so late in the season, none of the waterfalls, lakes, rivers were running. It would be an absolute show-stopper to see them in full swing. In fact, it was so dry that even Mirror Lake was just a grassy/sandy paddock. Oh well, next time… 😉
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Thank you for your advice Distan! I look forward to our trip- and I surely will ensure our time there is during the spring!
Cheers.
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Gorgeous pictures, Distan!
I’ve been wanting to do a bit of climbing there but it looks so intimidating! That close-up one is amazing – did you see any climbers?
Fabulous!
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Heya Karen. Yep, I did do a bit of climber spotting but they weren’t as easy to find as I was expecting. El Capitan is ENORMOUS! Even when zoomed in to 320mm I still had to enlarge the resulting picture by 100% (full magnification) on the LCD monitor in order to see anything. I’ll try and put up a couple of dodgy pictures with enlargements in the next post so people can get a bit of a sense of it. Actually, they were easiest to spot at night-fall because you could see their lanterns as they were setting up their beds whilst suspended on the rock-face.
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You got some great images Distan, they are really superb.
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Thanks Leanne. I was happy that I took the lenses I did – particularly here in Yosemite. You can appreciate my distress when I thought I’d smashed my wide angle only a couple of days prior in San Fran. How lucky was I ?!?!!
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Oh yes, that would have been devastating. I am so glad it was okay.
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Great shots, the mountain ones nearly look painted…I can’t wait to make it here some day!
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Thanks for that. I know what you mean about some of them having that painterly quality. I’ve just finished editing a set of images taken from Yosemite’s Tunnel View – I did them as HDR’s and they are boarding on surreal, such was the vista and lighting. Will post them this week hopefully. Thanks for commenting too, I really appreciate it.
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How beautiful. You are making me jealous – I’ve always wanted to visit Yosemite since I was a kid and read an Ansel Adams book.
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I know what you mean. Ansell Adam’s work on Yosemite was the first photography book I ever bought as a kid. It was wonderful to finally visit all these years later.
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