It’s quite an odd experience to go to Yosemite for the purpose of making photographs. Everywhere you go, whether in direct sunlight or in the shade of an iconic granite structure, you are under the shadow of Ansel Adams.
I know of no photographer who has staked such a claim on a place as Mr. Adams has done on the first (depending on whom you ask) US National Park. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to make a photograph of Half Dome without recalling several of Adams’ images unless by some chance you’ve managed never to see them. And if you stay long in Yosemite Valley you can’t avoid that; his images are everywhere you look. In some ways Adams is more THE personality of Yosemite than Muir or Olmstead, which to me shows us again the power of photography. People around the world know Yosemite not from visiting in person but from Adams’ photographs, and I expect some of those folks are drawn here to visit because of his images.
Adams made wonderful photographs of other places, too, and one might argue that his work in the park has overshadowed his work elsewhere. But his Yosemite images are at times larger than the subjects themselves, as difficult as that might be to imagine, given the sheer physical size of El Capitan and Half Dome. As I’ve said before, Yosemite is a majestic place to visit because of the size and beauty of its geological features. But the way we view things and in the right conditions feel connected to and moved by what we see is largely a matter of how light is shining on them. To be in the valley at noon on a clear day is to be amazed at the grandeur of the park, but to see its characters lit as Adams captured them is something else indeed, and therein lies much of his amazing talent as a photographer. Adams is famous for roving around the park as an inhabitant, not a visitor, getting to know the most interesting views and how the light acted throughout the year. Being in exactly the right place at the right time was often less a happy accident for him than the result of research and persistence, of being in that spot before when the light wasn’t quite right, and then retuning what the light was glowing.
For the photographer visiting for a day or two, or even five, it’s quite a daunting task to go into Ansel’s house and dare to make a photograph with any intention other than having a pleasant snapshot of your visit. The Yosemite amateur, which surely even an accomplished professional landscape shooter is on his or her first days in the park, is at a distinct disadvantage of not knowing the terrain, the trails, the perspectives, and most of all, the light and how it will fall on a given day of the year.
There is a famous photo opportunity that happens several times in February, if you’re lucky, where the setting sun shines just so on Horsetail Fall and makes the water glow orange against the dark granite cliff. It can only happen during a two-week period in the second month because the orbiting Earth has to be in just the right spot on its trip around the sun, but doesn’t happen every night during those two weeks. Things have to be just right for those special fifteen minutes to appear; if there is a mischievous cloud in the way, there is no magic on the fall. You might devote most of February to getting that photograph, and go to the spot where you can see it, and wait, day after day for the magic to happen so you can shoot it. But if you can only devote 20 days in February to being in that spot, you might not get the image you seek. Though the sun is in the right spot, the weather might never cooperate.
Or maybe you will go to the park with amazing skills and experience of your own, a master of landscape photography ready to the challenge of working in Ansel’s house and looking for something he didn’t manage in his time here. Some amazing photographers have accomplished this. A visit to the Ansel Adams Gallery in the village will prove it. There you can find amazing, gorgeous, inspiring photographs of the park, some by photographer who, like Adams, have moved to the area to make Yosemite their subject. But even these photographers, with their unique visions and techniques, with their unique results and beautiful images, are still in the shadow of THE Yosemite photographer. While discussing this very thing with my friends, John, Suad and Tyler this past week, I imagined the goal of these amazing artists as to go to Yosemite in order to play second fiddle to Ansel Adams. Looking at their images, I’m very glad they didn’t let this stop them. Some of their images are incredible. It’s just somehow a bit of a shame that they can’t be viewed out of the Adams-dominated context of Yosemite imagery.
On our last night in the park, Tyler brought us to the Mountain Room restaurant, which offers its guests a delicious dining experience complimented by the presence of many (20? 30?) large prints not by Adams but by contemporary photographers working in Yosemite in recent years. Some of the photographs… All I can say is that some of them are achingly beautiful, small miracles of light and technique, the rare kind of photograph that transcends the millions of photographs made every day, the type I could only make accompanied by an act of God. And as amazing as these images are, they still inhabit a place on the great shelf of Yosemite Art below the works of Ansel Adams. He was, as Tyler put it, The Man. He knew the park like no one had, and perhaps no one has since. He brought his clumsy, bulky equipment to incredibly hard to reach places, and he managed to do so at just the right time. He certainly deserves his place in Yosemite’s history and the American photographic tradition.
So yes, it’s a bit cheeky to go to Yosemite to make photographs if your fantasy is to catch something that might be placed in that second shelf. But cheeky or not, it is so very enjoyable to try.
