My attempt at photographing Horsetail Falls

My family and I took a trip up to Yosemite to photograph the light on horse tail falls. There is a window of opportunity in February when the light is just right. Galen Rowell made the shot famous in 1973 and the popularity has only seemed to have grown.

Unfortunately I think we went a little too early by maybe a couple of days because the light was just a little to the left of the falls (see photo series below). What I mistakenly found out is knowing exactly where you want to go!

We first went to the picnic area near El Capitan but it was really hard to see the water on the side of the rock.  We were afraid that just the rock would light up but the water would just look like a smear.

Neat angle but very little water. Just a slight mist. For a while we even had our cameras pointed at the wrong water fall slightly to the left of the fall. There was even a TV crew there along with quite a handful of other photographers all wondering about the lack of water. Earlier in that day from southside drive we had seen the falls and it looked like you could see the water from that angle.

Then a friend text messaged me who was also in the valley saying that the southside drive would be a better angle and you could see more water. The window of opportunity to photograph is only about 5 minutes so we decided to chance it and look for a better spot. WOW –  was it hard to find a pull-out and where ever you did there were other photographers trying to stake their claim to a spot as well.

Finnally we decided on a little clearing on the side of the road and waited. The clouds were starting to wisp their way in.

I shot with a 70 – 200 but decided perhaps it wasn’t close enough so I put a 1.4 x teleconverter on and I waited. The clouds were getting thicker by this point and I knew that tomorrow they were calling for a chance of rain. I figured it was just going to get grayer and grayer as the clouds blocked the sunset… and then it happened…

See the animated GIF of to the left that shows the glow starting to walk up the face where the falls is. Here is where I made my mistake. I didn’t realize that it was such a large swath of light that hit the face and that the light on the falls was really an illusion that it’s just the falls that is lit up. What created the illusion is the angle. The falls sticks out from the wall and recesses next to it on the left and then El Capitan is in shadow beyond that creating that dark background that Galen got in his photo. I had to see it myself to fully understand that.

Right before my eyes there was a little orange glow that started at the bottom of the falls and started to burn into the rock like a blazing fire. It traveled up the face of the rock wall until my eyes were filled with a fiery orange. The animation doesn’t show the intensity. The photos below do show the intensity and what is wild is that I didn’t enhance the color at all. It was really that bright. I thought when I saw these on screen that no one was going to believe me on this!

The light is created from the sun shining through the peaks of the three brothers. I thought this was a narrower ray than it was so it became obvious my spot was not the best for what I was aiming for.

Realizing at this point that I should have stayed in my original location since the whole wall was on fire and not just the falls there was no hope. I just had to make the most of it. While these weren’t exactly the shots I was going for it still was a magical moment. According to this article next week is supposed to be the optimum days. Unfortunately there are a couple storms coming in so who knows – I guess I will have to chance it!

There is always next year 🙂