It's refreshing to find yourself away from the deluge of tourists and photographers that descend on Yosemite every weekend, and even more refreshing to find a view that's not on some list somewhere that every photographer obliges to shoot. No, I refuse to camp at Tunnel View with a hundred others staring into a cloudless Yosemite Valley. I'd much rather hike my way to seclusion and a fresh view... I present for your enjoyment last light on El Capitan, and its reflection in a Merced River becalmed by a 5-second exposure. Photographed March 2019.
The refracted rays of the Moon, just below the local horizon, illuminate Banner Peak in the Ansel Adams Wilderness as the Milky Way rises majestically above the Eastern Sierra. This photo appears in my photo essay The Tale of a Thousand Islands.
When Jupiter and Saturn last raced across the sky in tandem, Galileo had yet to publish his famous Dialogo in which he explained the motion of planets around a central Sun. This week, the Great Conjunction of 2020 takes us back to the roots of the Scientific Revolution, when curiosity was once again rekindled in mankind. With the juxtaposition of the crescent Moon this evening, a perfect Malibu sunset was the obvious choice for a setting befitting a millennial celestial event.
