Yosemite Valley in Winter
February 2006
Valley Reflection Panorama
It had been just a few months short of 30 years since I had been to Yosemite National Park. The last time I was there in the winter was even another 10-15 years earlier. I was able to fix that situation by joining Steve Kossack on one of his excellent photography workshops in February this year. I've talked to Steve many times about Yosemite since I had been there often as a child and as a teenager. I wondered how it would be after so many years. Not much in the park had changed except for a few new buildings, some campgrounds wiped out by floods, and they no longer do the fire fall from Glacier Point. However, I found I had changed a lot. Spending time in the landscape has helped me to become more aware of how important it is to preserve these special places. Hanging out with other landscape photographers has given me other insights as well. Those changes allowed me to appreciate the valley in ways I could not in the past.
Photographically this was a fantastic trip, but even more, it was meeting an old, dear friend and discovering that there is much more to them than I had been able to see in the past. Even having been in the park 20 to 30 times in the past, I saw things I had not seen before and was able to have a deeper appreciation of the ones I was familiar with. I highly recommend you go to Yosemite, or even better join Steve on one of his workshops. If you can't do that, his new DVD series contains a wealth of information on planning and shooting Yosemite as well as other locations.
I hope you enjoy the photographs and appreciate the beauty and majesty of this wonderful valley.
Here is a link to an article I wrote for Steve Kossack's web
site on shooting the last sunset of the trip.
"Don't Give
Up Too Early!"
For all my images from this trip including ones not in this gallery check my Image Catalog under Yosemite Valley Winter 06.