Cook's Meadow, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, CA, 10/19/2009
There's an old saying that if you want to make beautiful photographs, go out in bad weather. A half hour before the moment captured here, the sky in Yosemite Valley was so dark, gray, and gloomy, and the rainfall was so relentless that I believed there was no hope for any photography that day. Shortly after I convinced myself of this, the sky unexpectedly lightened, the rainfall diminished, and I began to look around the Cook's Meadow area for possible subjects to photograph in the shade. But the clouds continued to thin and the sun began to emerge! After making a photograph of Upper Yosemite Fall, I turned my attention to the southwest across Cook's Meadow and witnessed the reappearance of Sentinel Rock through the clearing autumn rainstorm clouds. Sentinel Rock rises 3,043 feet above the valley floor. The famous and gifted photographer Galen Rowell referred to this type of photograph as a dynamic landscape - constantly changing, and never to be seen again. For me, the effect here is made even more remarkable by the juxtaposition of the ephemeral and vanishing clouds with the ageless and enduring Sentinel Rock.
