387 - Glacier Point
Glacier View is all about seeing Yosemite from above. Believe it or not, the views in the valley aren't anything compared to what's seen from up here. This is the REAL Yosemite.
For this shoot, my buddy Jordan decided to make it up to Yosemite and hang out for a few days. We were shooting buddies back in Boulder, CO and it was dope to finally reunite after a couple months.
We started off this adventure at Glacier Point Curve Vista, a spot we'd found off Insta. Whoever made that name was feeling fancy, that's for sure. But seriously, this might be the most beautiful road curve of all time. You're driving along for about an hour, pure forest, not many views. Then all of a sudden... BAM- Half Dome is in perfect frame, and road curve in front of it is just so silky.
Naturally we decided to bring a longboard up to slide into the frame:
Aaaaaaand I love that shot. Any kind of environmental portrait that is DYNAMIC just adds so much more "umph" to it. I need focus on finding dynamic movement in the future instead of just standing there in frame looking dramatic.
Believe it or not, that shot actually took me awhile to figure out- even with a few Insta shots to reference. Namely because I kept trying to get MYSELF in the frame, but the skating happens so fast it's hard to get the angle you want when shooting on a timer that takes a photo every one second. And with my wide angle lens I was using, Half Dome just looked wimpy.
And that's when Jordan decided to hop in for a go. He slammed down the hill, and I realized I needed to be shooting this on my zoom lens. So I picked up my 70-200mm 2.8 GM GM. He did a few more runs, and I focused on getting him in the perfect spot, and encouraged him to lean sideways to give the illusion that he was riding faster.
I used to get so obsessed with always having ME in the frame. But shooting other models is SO much easier, I'd highly highly highly recommend it if you can make it happen with friends. No one cares whos in frame. They just care about the shot.
Uhhh what else? Oh yeah... The edit on that one was bananas. Had to add some sun colors with blue tones on the side to give the shot some character. The image was basically just white and black because the lighting hour was so bad.
Turned out great though. I'm happy with the end result.
After snagging that shot, we had about 30 minutes until sunset. This curve wasn't actually the "epic" view of this location. Glacier Point View was.
I'll cut right to the chase here... This is what I got:
Relatively straight forward shot, the view was goddamn epic. I liked the slim dead tree, and positioned it so it stood up nicely in contrast to the bulky mountain. I took inspiration of that shot from a shoot I did in Rocky Mountain National Park a couple years ago, near Sprague Lake.
I could have worked harder to find a stronger foreground, but honestly I didn't want to take away from the grandness of the view. I wanted the whole thing FULL FRAME- because it was way to big not too.
I think I need to accept that that's OK sometimes. How I want to remember a location is the point of photography, right?
Gah. With all this Photoshop nowadays, it's easy to get caught up in making the most difficult shots you can, just because you can. But that's not always right.
As my mom always used to say... When in doubt, follow the KISS principle.Keep it Simple Stupid.
Alright guys, that's all I got for this shoot. I'll see ya tomorrow.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
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