Going With the Flow
Dogwood Tapestry I have been photographing the dogwood of Yosemite Valley for 40 years. My favorite locations are along the Merced River where their branches hang gracefully over the rushing water. In the image shown here, I love how these branches form a tapestry effect above the river’s rushing spring runoff. I made around 45 frames total using several shutter speeds. I wanted a long enough exposure to blur the water but fast enough to have branches sharp. The exposure was 1.5 seconds, requiring that I wait very patiently for the dogwood to be still. Back in the studio, I reviewed each frame with Adobe Lightroom's Compare View tool, slowly edit down to the best expression of what I saw and felt. Each exposure had subtle differences. My point is that it takes this kind of extra effort both in the field and on the computer to push one's work to the next level. Clearing Spring Storm Although I generally prefer creating intimate landscape images like the dogwood photograph,...
