Winter Comes a Knock'n

Last Friday while working on some new landscape paintings my wife called from work around 2:30 to say the clouds were looking great and I might want to get out there get some pics. She was right they were looking great. So my son and I went out for a drive. Next thing you know we are in Yosemite.

I love clouds but I love them more when they're part of a beautiful scene. I couldn't think of a better place for that than Yosemite so we drove the hour and a half there.  I hoping to get some some Fall color thrown into the mix, but Sadly the snow that fell the night before had knocked most of the leaves on the ground. Fern Springs was almost completely covered in leaves. I took some pics but the leaves were a bit to messy looking.

There was a nice section of maple leaves carpeting the ground near there though. The few leaves I saw in the area still on the trees looked a bit beat up. The leaves on the ground were quite soggy but the area was still quite beautiful. I kept thinking how do I do this little area justice in a pic?  It's frustrating when you feel yourself failing at it.  You want that one shot that captures it all. I thought I had some that came close but it was the leaves on the moss covered rocks that I found liking the most.

Two of the paintings I've been working on were dealing with reflections so I took a couple shots of Yosemite's two most well know granite monoliths.

 

 Instead of heading for Valley View for sunset as originally planned we kept going toward Curry Village. The clouds were getting some nice color and the mist from the ground was coming up. Things were changing so fast I knew we wouldn't make it down to Valley View in time. One minute the mist would be rising and coming in front and behind the row of Cedars and the next it would be gone. You know how sometimes you wait in an area hoping for the conditions to improve because it looks promising? Next time I'm going in much earlier and giving myself more time. None of this entering the park at 4PM stuff.