El Capitan Reflections, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Julian, Nicky, and I left Berkeley after their visit to the dentist and lunch on a Thursday in early October. Despite road work, it was a fast trip, and we came into Yosemite Valley just before sunset. We stopped at a pull-out on the valley floor and made our way over to the Merced. The kids played on the banks and I set my tripod up and tried to capture reflections of El Capitan in a backwater.

I made quite a few exposures, but the ones with good reflections cut the top of El Capitan. For the heck of it, I tried some fisheyes. The horizontal compositions ended up looking pretty weird, a world-in-a-bubble effect, but I like the way this vertical fisheye shot came out.

We’d been planning to spend a few nights in the valley, and then head over Tioga Pass for the Eastern Sierra and Bodie. But mountain snows closed the route, so we came home early instead. Perhaps just as well. The kids had fun trekking around Yosemite, but they were ready for home.

[10.5mm Digital Fisheye, 1/4 of a second at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]