I have scheduled, at least tentatively, that second week off that I planned on taking, and I’ve set a motel reservation for a few days in Yosemite. With a bit of luck, I’ll hit it during a high time for waterfalls and as the dogwood kicks in — spring is late this year, but if seems to be arriving, finally.
And that has me thinking of Yosemite, and doing some planning for what shooting I want to do there (most planning to go out the window as soon as I get there and see what’s going on, likely), and looking to some of my yosemite resources for inspiration and advice; I thought it might make sense to talk about a few of them.
The two current photographers that I find influence me most strongly about Yosemite are Michael Frye and William Neill. Frye’s blog is one of the resources I’m using to try to time myself into the park for spring, in fact. Frye’s been photographing yosemite for a couple of decades and was staff photographer for the Ansel Adams Gallery there (and I’ve recently been borrowing heavily from his lightroom post processing technique to rebuild my own, but that’s a blog posting for another day). Frye has published The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite
William Neill’s been at it a long time as well. His work moves very heavily into artistic abstraction over traditional landscape imagery, which is very different from the typical work I shoot — but if you look at what I do when I go out on extended trips like the one I’m planning, there’s usually some experimentation in abstraction, and Neill is the photographer that I’ve been studying to get a sense of how to do that. It’s an aspect of photography I like and am trying to teach myself to do well. Neill has also been experimenting with ebook publishing, and he’s turned out some strong works in that form; I especially like Impressions of Light as a good work showing the power of the abstract landscape, and of course, his book Yosemite: Volume One on the park. He’s also recently published a new volume on Yosemite, Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Masters
But the photographer that first defined Yosemite for me was Galen Rowell. If you can find a copy of Yosemite and the Wild Sierra
But the book I find most inspirational about Yosemite isn’t a photography book at all. It’s a book of woodprints by a Japanese Artist named Chiura Obata. He first visited Yosemite in 1927 and continued for many years, finally interrupted by World War II when he was interned in a camp (and his work done at the camp is also stunning: you should get a copy of Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment
Notably absent in that list of influences is Ansel Adams himself. I can explain (maybe). In my first incarnation as a photographer, which lasted until I was out of high school (1970ish to about 1978) I was primarily a sports and journalism photography shooting mostly Black and White (love my Tri-X) and being a bit of a darkroom rat. I studied Adams a bit, but mostly from the black and white and darkroom aspects, not the nature aspects. I did my first nature photography in the latter half of the 80′s primarily using Velvia, but gave it up again (and I wasn’t very good, or serious). It wasn’t until digital kicked in and I caught the bug again about 2003 that I started shooting and then started getting serious, and in all of that time I was doing color work. It’s only been the last few months I’ve even started moving back into black and white — so along the way, Adams work just hasn’t been a focus of my studies. I need to fix that at some point, especially now that I’m trying to work with black and white on a regular basis.
Yosemite has always been an important place for me; my family visited there regularly growing up — I’m old enough to remember (barely) the firefall, and (seriously!) playing golf on the course that the Awahnee had (which no longer exists). Like photography, I lost my tie to the park for many years, and like photography, now that I’ve reconnected, it’s hit me hard, and I’m loving every minute I get to spend there. Especially with a camera. So hopefully this next trip will let me fill out my portfolio a bit and try do do things I haven’t already done, instead of sitting up at Tunnel View for hours waiting for the light to hit just right (of course, I may do that again, too).
And when I go, I’ll take along the thoughts and images of those who influence me to guide me….
This article was posted on Chuq Von Rospach, Photographer and Author at Thinking of Yosemite. This article is copyright 2013 by Chuq Von Rospach under a Creative Commons license for non-commericial use only with attribution. See the web site for details on the usage policy.