Yosemite National Park is one of the most distinctive and unique locations for travel photography. The only problem, however, is that it is often crowded because of its popularity.
I took the featured photo in the middle of April on a weekday hoping for an empty park.
When I arrived at the park’s entrance, I was prepared to pay when park officials told me it was National Park Week and that entrance fees were waived for the entire week. I knew I was doomed.
By noon, the park was full of tourists, which meant I had to improvise and use the tourists as part of my composition.
This is the view of Yosemite Falls from Cook’s Meadow.
Loc: 37.741633, -119.592415
Shooting
The goal here was to make a couple and the Yosemite Falls to be a focal point of the composition.
- Camera: Sony a6000
- Lens: Sony 10-18
- Focal Length: 10mm
- Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority (A)
- ISO: 100
- Aperture: F8
- Shutter Speed: 1/100s
- Bracketing: 3 (-1, 0, 1)
- Tripod: FEISOL Tournament CT-3442
- Ballhead: FEISOL CB-40D
Editing & Processing
It was a single RAW image editing.
Lightroom (90%)
Aspect ratio change from 3×2 to 4×3 (Crop Overlay Tool). Vertical distortion fix (Transform Tool).
Lightroom Rapid Editing workflow. I used Point Lobos style preset from Landscape Collection in a combination with adjustment presets from TOOLKIT to tweak the image.
Lightroom Editing Formula: Point Lobos (8, 11, 17, 22, 31)
Photoshop (10%)
Cleaning (Stamp Tool)Plugins: DeNoise (noise reduction), Topaz Detail (local contrast boost).
Total Time: 12min
Before & After Transformation
