Let a Camera Be Your Eye
To look through the lens of a camera is to make the rest of the world disappear. Cars, backpackers, crowds of agitated tourists all melt away as a single image comes into focus: a granite cliff reflected in the Merced River; white waves of snowmelt cascading down Yosemite Falls; the way the sun wraps around the El Capitan monolith like a wedding band. This is what Ansel Adams, the photographer whose name has become synonymous with Yosemite, discovered when he first came here in 1916.
Adams later wrote: "I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite." Back then, he was just another tourist carrying his father's Kodak Box Brownie No. 4 camera (yesteryear's point-and-shoot). Today, the Ansel Adams Gallery, tucked away in Yosemite Village, offers free guided walks (reserve in advance!) that retrace his steps and teach tricks to battle harsh afternoon light and compose interesting pictures. "When you arrive in Yosemite, you're hit with all of these big things," says Sara Bateman, a staff photographer at the gallery. "A camera shuts you out from the world. Everything quiets down. It's a more personal experience."
Parkarazzi. At 9 a.m., a dozen or so tourists gather at the gallery--some with professional-grade cameras, others carrying tiny digital cameras. One man follows his wife--who is shooting 35-mm film--with a camcorder. They are young and old, male and female, East Coast and West Coast. All hope to capture even a fraction of what Adams saw. "When I have special feelings about a place, photography makes it that much better," says Terry Casteel, an Oregon winemaker. "A camera becomes another eye in understanding a place."
The group sets off for Cooks Meadow, which is in the heart of Yosemite Valley but away from the crowds already gathered at the base of Yosemite Falls to see this year's substantial snowmelt. The valley, as it is called here, is surrounded by a granite precipice that seems to stretch into the sky without end. The valley floor is only 7 miles long and 1 mile wide but sees almost 95 percent of the park's 3.5 million yearly visitors, who flock to glance at the vistas of Half Dome and Yosemite Falls--an average visit tops off at four hours. Locals joke that all you need to do to avoid the crowds is go on a slightly elevated or unpaved trail. To see why, start walking up the Falls Trail, surrounded by girls teetering on high heels and dads with toddlers in tow.
To battle valley overpopulation, the National Park Service has hired 18 hybrid buses, which take tourists (packed in like sardines in a can) from trail to trail. Some people prefer to drive their own cars, but rangers say the environmentally friendly buses have cut noise pollution and traffic jams.
From Cooks Meadow, as from the lesser-known Valley Floor Trail, you can see the towering cliffs made legendary by Adams: Sentinel Rock, North Dome, Cathedral Rocks. Ansel is everywhere--capturing the clouds over Tuolumne Meadows, standing on his pickup truck, adjusting the bellows of his large-format camera, framing the craggy edge of Merced Canyon. There is no place or time of year in Yosemite he did not capture. And yet, the possibilities for photographers still seem endless. "Explore off the beaten path," advises Bateman. "Get the grand images out of your system. Shoot Half Dome, shoot the falls. Then start focusing on your own stuff."
The photo walk is both a history lesson and a workshop. Bateman explains how young Adams was an aspiring concert pianist before he became a legendary photographer and park conservationist. She advises on technical matters--which filters are best for what kind of light, how to adjust shutter speed and aperture. And she passes on familiar but often overlooked tips--the "magic" hours are right before and after sunrise; a polarized filter will cut glare; shoot in shade when the light is harsh. "Don't become reliant on your zoom lens! If you can walk up to it, walk up to it!" she calls out to students.
After the walk, Bateman invites her students back to the gallery and hands out a park map highlighting places where Adams shot his most memorable images. "You're standing in the place where he was standing and looking through the lens like he did, and it's just this rush of emotion," she gushes. "It's so amazing!" Her students, some of whom are pulling out wallets to buy photo books and photo equipment, enthusiastically agree.
LOCAL FAVE
"Park above 9,000 feet elevation at the base of Gaylor Peak. The dividends are instant. Without expending any energy, you're already within prime country for photographs. It's just a 20-minute climb to the top. You can see roughly 80 percent of the mountaintops in Yosemite."
MARC SOARES, author of 100 Hikes in Yosemite National Park, pictured with his wife, Patricia
This story appears in the July 4, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.