Northside Drive, Yosemite Village, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, CA, 6/6/2011
A few months prior to making a springtime visit to Yosemite National Park I found an intriguing snapshot of Yosemite Falls on the Internet. The photo interested me because it looked tropical, giving the impression that the famous waterfalls were in a rain forest! The snapshot view was upward and did not include the ground. Naturally I wondered where this unusual vantage point might be. On a cloudy morning in early June I wandered about Yosemite Valley until I found the very spot from which the snapshot was made. I discovered the location to be right by the road in Yosemite Village - one of the busiest and most obvious places of all! The view may be easy to get to, but everyone walks right by on their way to the falls; this is not a common viewpoint. After establishing the exact position to work from with a clear view of the lower waterfall, I decided to frame my photograph differently from the snapshot by including the ground. Instead of tilting my camera upward to capture the falls and the granite walls around them, I raised the front standard and lens, keeping the camera perfectly level. This method adheres to the architectural tradition in photography and preserves the vertical lines in a composition. The total height of Yosemite Falls is 2,425 feet, and the longest drop (the upper fall) is 1,430 feet. Yosemite Falls is the tallest waterfall in North America and the sixth tallest waterfall in the world.
