El Capitan from Taft Point, Yosemite National Park

After posting my last large format Black and White photo from Yosemite, I thought I'd continue with that theme a little longer.

While visiting Yosemite back in June with friends, we had an evening plan to shoot at Sentinel Dome, and used the late afternoon as an opportunity to do another favorite hike in the same area - the hike to Taft Point. This easy hike starts at the same trailhead as that of Sentinel Dome and after a relatively easy mile or so, you reach Taft Point and The Fissures. At Taft Point you look down into the valley to great views of El Capitan and Yosemite Falls, with only a small piece of pipe acting as the barrier between safety and a 3000ft plunge down to the valley floor. In fact, most of the edge is quite exposed to that drop, but if I recall correctly, I shot this from behind the relative safety of that small railing.

During this afternoon the clouds were moving quickly overhead, which meant that the clouds' shadows constantly moved and changed shape over the landscape below. I feel I was fortunate to time this so that the nose of El Capitan is well defined by the shadows falling on the trees behind it. My friend Suad, shooting next to me at the same time, captured what was perhaps even better light, which can be seen here.

This was shot on Ilford FP4+, developed in HC110(b) Developer, and scanned. I prepared a contact print, which I actually quite liked, but produced a very poor scan of that.

November was a lean month for updates, and December will likely be the same, but I'm still here, and will continue to post when I can - even if its just my back collection of images from earlier this year.

Go to Yosemite!

Tachihara 4x5 | Caltar 210mm f/6.1 | f/16 | 1/15s | Ilford FP4+ 125 | Tripod | HC110(b)

See more related images in my Yosemite National Park Gallery.

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