Cathedral Rock From Foggy El Capitan Meadow

When the fog rolls into Yosemite Valley, it instantly makes everything even that much more photogenic. When it happens around sunset, it makes Yosemite magical.

I was about to give up on the day and head back to Oakhurst, where I was staying on my trip. On the way out, I spotted El Capitan meadow inundated with fog. Not having experienced fog before at Yosemite, until this trip, I was uncertain how the fog rolls in and how it rolls out. This has a similar mindset as to knowing what spots are in good light and when, during the day. Once you figure this out, you can chase the fog just like chasing the light. In my mind, fog equals moody.

For this shot, this is a pretty straight forward post-process of the digital file. There was no special filters applied to this shot. When Yosemite is this magical, you do not have to do much in post-processing.

When composing this shot, I made sure the photo had plenty of depth to the shot. I think depth, when it is foggy, is extremely important. By having objects at varying depths in the photo, you can really translate how thick the fog is. In this shot, I made sure I had trees up close and pretty clear, then as you move farther back into the image, you had trees becoming more obscured by the fog, and then back to Cathedral Rock, which is behind the fog layer.

I also like the patterns of these foreground trees very much. That was another reason why I chose them as the foreground trees. I also made sure to leave room for the sky, since it was sunset and had some nice pastel tones to it. I thought the clouds in the sky also helped with the whole foggy cloudy concept of the shot.