Dusk at Cooks Meadow

Posted by Don Smith (California, United States) on 10 May 2008 in Landscape & Rural.

The extreme opposite times of the day - dawn and dusk - offer wonderful photographic opportunities, especially with digital capture and no worries of reciprocity failure (color and exposure shifts caused by long exposures with film). Such was the case with this image which I captured about 20 minutes past sunset in Yosemite's Cooks Meadow. An early evening rain storm allowed for evaporation and the cooling Valley temperatures helped produce the mist. I had spotted this bog earlier in the day and returned with a workshop group that evening for reflection shots. This was actually the last image I captured before calling it a day. I love how greens in digital capture saturate under low light levels. The lack of wind allowed for a long exposure (30 seconds) with no worries of movement with either the foreground grasses or the water. I simply metered for the grass in the foreground and then the mist in the background and noted a 4-stop difference in tonal values. A 3-stop Singh-Ray soft edge split-neutral density filter allowed me to balance the scene in one frame. To see more of my landscape imagery, view the first 15 pages of my book On the Edge, or learn how you can join one of my workshops, please visit my website at http://www.donsmithphotography.com.