Bridalveil Fall/Four Mile Trail - Yosemite National Park (Part 7)

Yosemite National Park is a national park located in California that stretches eastern portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in the central eastern portion of California and covers around 761,268 acres or 3,080.74 km² of land. Yosemite National Park is best known for its waterfalls, deep valleys, grand meadows, giant sequoias, giant wilderness area, and much more. I, personally, love Yosemite National Park. I think it is very beautiful and is a great place for photographs. I also happen to live in the SF Bay Area which isn't very far from it! I try to make at least 1 trip almost every year to the park. I visited the park several month ago and I am here to show you some of the photos I took in the park as well as some photos I took on the way into the park from the SF Bay Area. These photos will be divided over several blog posts. I hope you enjoy the photos! Also, I have route information recorded using a Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver. If you are planning a similar trip to Yosemite National Park and would like to see the route I took, feel free to email me at the email address I provided on my "About the Photographer" page for a copy. I can provide you the route information in Google Earth KMZ, Canon NMEA, and GPX formats. If you would like to get notifications when I do post, you can Like/Follow me on the following fan pages: Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. If you are interested, choose one of the links below:

• Yosemite 2013 (Best Photos)
• Yosemite 2013 (All Photos)

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Now let's introduce you to the photos for today. The photos for today was from the 2nd day of my trip. The photos are from Bridalveil Fall and trail head of Four Mile Trail.

A portrait shot of Bridalveil Fall from the parking lot. 

A long exposure of the trail leading up to the base of Bridalveil Fall. ND filter was used to achieve a long exposure to blur out the people walking by. 

Photography Tip: ND filters allows you to achieve long exposure even in the middle of the day. They come in handy when you want to blur waterfalls (create silky look) and also to blur out people walking by (for crowded areas). For the photo above there were a lot of people walking by, however from the use of an ND filter, they did not show up in my photo. Just be aware when buying ND filters, that you get a high quality one as cheap ones will usually color cast or cause your image to be blurry. Brands I recommend is the Big Lee Stopper, Hoya, and B+W. 

Water droplets on my lens. As you can see the waterfall was very strong during the time of the year I visited Yosemite (April). I originally wanted to ND filter my shots to get some really nice blur, but obviously it was impossible with how much water was raining down on my lens. Also this comes to show you how good of a weatherproofing the new Canon EOS 5D Mark III has. I use it with my Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM Lens which is a fully weather sealed lens (once a filter is installed) with a rubber gasket at the lens mount area (no moving parts except the zoom and focus ring). Worked out really well. 

After some clean up work, I went back and hand held a few shots of the waterfall. 

Product Recommendation: I use the B+W 82mm XS-Pro Kaesemann Circular Polarizer with Multi-Resistant Nano Coating filter for my lens. The cool thing about this line of lenses is that it has a new nano coating that makes water extremely hard to stick to the surface of the filter. For the above photo, the only clean up I did was the following. I first hiked back down a little bit to an area where the waterfall was not raining down as hard on. I then took out my Giotto Rocket Air Blaster and gave the filter a few puffs of air. I blew all the beads of water off to the side onto the metal ring where it fell off. There was no residue. I am not exaggerating. That is how waterproof or "hydrophobic" (in more scientific terms) this filter is! 

After another clean up round, I proceeded to do a landscape shot of Bridalveil Fall. 

A stream of water Bridalveil Fall produces. I didn't ND filter these as the vegetation around the area was thick enough to block out enough light for a good enough shot. 

Another photo of the stream of water Bridalveil Fall produces. 

Black and white HDR composition of a mountain as seen from the trail head of Four Mile Trail. This was the first time I tried processing my photos in black and white. I thought it made a pretty nice effect. 

Approximate GPS location (type into Google) according to the Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver: 37 46 34 N 119 47 44 W

Same HDR composition processed in color. 

View of Yosemite Falls from across the street from the trail head of Four Mile Trail.

Approximate GPS location (type into Google) according to the Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver: 37 44 02 N 119 36 07 W

Photo of cars passing by on Southside Drive near the trail head of Four Mile Trail. 

Approximate GPS location (type into Google) according to the Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver: 37 44 02 N 119 36 07 W

HDR composition on Four Mile Trail (near the trail head). 

Approximate GPS location (type into Google) according to the Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver: 39 21 97 N 119 44 31 W

A close up of a Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) and some moss. 

Giant rock on Four Mile Trail. Possible leftover from an avalanche? (First thought that came to mind)

Approximate GPS location (type into Google) according to the Canon GP-E2 GPS Receiver: 39 17 10 N 119 39 05 W

These are all the photos for today. I hope you have enjoyed them. Next time I have photos of birds in Yosemite Village (went there to get lunch, the burgers were delicious btw) and a few landscape shots in Cook's Meadow. Please don't forget to share my blog posts with your friends! If you would like to get notifications next time I post, you can "Like" me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.

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