Spur of the Moment

A last minute trip to Yosemite brings both joy and sadness.

I'd waited years for the right amount of snow to fall In Yosemite Valley and shoot those infamous "Ansel Adams" style winter images. Leaving the Bay Area around 8PM would give me 5 hours of dark and clear skies, moonlit mountains covered in snow and the solitude of unfettered access to my favorite park, all before the sun came up.

Halfway there, my normal route was unexpectedly closed, forcing me to backtrack to the only road left open - a 3 hour detour. It was brutally cold that night (single digits), but magically beautiful and serene throughout the Valley. Trudging though thigh-high snow with all my gear wasn't an easy task, but I managed to get the shots I came for.

One of the last sequences of images brought about the only sad part of the trip - breaking a carbon fiber leg on my Gitzo tripod. This tripod's been all over the world with me - through numerous dust storms at Burning Man, submerged several feet into a salty high tide on a plaza in Venice and plunked down on numerous mountains, deserts and city streets. Yeah, it'll get fixed, but it was sad to see it happen.

All that said, the resulting images were wonderful. I couldn't have been prouder of my efforts to persevere in the frigid conditions and absence of sleep.

#blogging #MikeFilippoff #photography #musings #Yosemite #snow #tripod #Gitzo #beautiful #cold