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Early morning light hitting top of El Capitan, with reflection in Merced River

Early morning light hitting top of El Capitan, with reflection in Merced River
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4 Comments | Report
jimhelmick
 
jimhelmick September 07, 2016
A remarkable photo!
GTJones Platinum
GTJones September 07, 2016
Thank You
Beegirl
 
Beegirl September 29, 2016
Love the reflection
andinorwich
 
andinorwich December 14, 2016
you could turn this photo upside down and wouldn't know the difference, the water is so still! so wonderful!
Luptak
 
Luptak November 13, 2017
Love this picture! Amazing work,congratulation.
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Behind The Lens

Location

This shot was taken during a 5 day trip to Yosemite National Park in February, 2016 with members from my local camera club. Yosemite in February is a fabulous time of year for photographers as there are fewer people in the park. This shot of El Capitan with the reflection in the Merced River is one great example of the beauty within the park.

Time

We arrived at this location before sunrise. At about 7:30AM on a chilly February morning the sun was just hitting the top of El Capitan. Sunrise is the perfect time to experience first light on top of this vertical rock formation.

Lighting

What makes this photograph so spectacular is more the reflection in the Merced River than El Capitan itself.

Equipment

The photograph was taken with a Pentax K-3 using a Samyang 10mm lens on a tripod. Exposure f/8, 1/80 sec at 100 ISO.

Inspiration

We arrived in plenty of time to view the sunrise and reflection in the river. There were many people including myself standing on the bridge by the main road (this you can see in the middle right of the photo). I was not overly pleased with the composition so I walked approximately 3/4 of a mile to a bend in the river. From this location I was able to get the entire mountain and reflection. The lens used is one I rarely use for daytime landscape shots, but for this photograph I needed the extra wide angle to get the entire El Capitan and its' reflection in a single shot.

Editing

The photo was shot in camera raw and Adobe Light Room was used for some minor adjustments to the exposure, clarity and saturation levels. I did very few adjustments as I wanted to keep it as natural and real as what I experienced that day.

In my camera bag

In my camera bag (LowePro Compu Trekker Plus) I have a Pentax K-3 (Yes I am one of the few remaining users of Pentax), various lenses (HD Pentax DA16-85mm, smc Pentax DA* 60-250, smc Pentax DA 50mm, and the above mentioned Samyang 2.8 10mm). A Manfrotto 055 tripod with 498Rc2 ball head. I also carry a circular polarizer, 3 and 6 stop Neutral Density filters, as well as various lens cleaning supplies.

Feedback

My advice for any budding landscape photographer (most pros already know this) is to really look around where you are shooting. As previously mentioned most people that day were standing on or around the bridge taking pictures. Those photos I took on the bridge were good but not great. I decided after a brief conversation with another pro photographer(at his suggestion) to take a walk further down the river. From there I was able to get a much more dramatic shot. If you want your photo to stand out you should try to get the shot from another point of view or angle, do not be the same as everybody else. If there are people around talk to them they may have suggestions as well.

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