Whether you’re an amateur or professional photographer, there is one place on the planet where it’s easy to achieve beautiful landscape photography. The natural beauty of Yosemite National Park has inspired photographers for decades. In 1890 Yosemite Valley was granted national park status, and since then a series of roads and trails were built to give you easy access to the valley's breathtaking vistas.
Begin your photo adventure at Tunnel View, the western entrance to the valley. Here the best panoramic views of Yosemite are found. With Half Dome rising in the background, the imposing rock face of El Capitan, and pine forests beckoning you closer, this is the perfect place to capture the beautiful landscape any time of day.
Tunnel View Star Trails
Get to Yosemite in early morning, an hour before dawn, and find the perfect spot to catch the early morning light at Glacier Point. You’ll be rewarded with majestic magenta colored skies and if your lucky blanketed with pink and orange clouds. You need not move from this spot to get beautiful landscape shots all day as the sun moves through the valley painting the sky in pale blues, then ending with the reds and indigos of sunset.
Glacier Point Sunset
In late spring, the snowmelt from the park’s many mountain peaks brings icy waters rushing down in thundering waterfalls. Yosemite Falls is North America's highest waterfall, at 2,425 feet, and consists of three distinct cascades. As the season warms the snow melts begin as a trickle, swell into downspouts, then return to mere trickles again as the summer continues. You’ll catch dozens of smaller falls throughout Yosemite, each one a beautiful subject for your landscape photography.
Yosemite Valley View
Just outside of Yosemite Valley the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias stands waiting to mock your wide-angle lens. Wonder at the immensity of Grizzly Giant, which is over 1800 years old and the California Tunnel Tree so immense you can walk through it.
As with all natural parks, to preserve this treasure follow the mantra on your visit: Take only photographs, leave only footprints.
Matthew Kuhns