Yosemite National Park

Click the display composite above to view the
1432 x 1200 version of the SXL Composite (4024 x 3372)

The Yosemite National Park section is a compilation of images taken during a number of visits
in the spring, summer and autumn over a period of six years. The result of an extensive project
requiring over 750 hours of image processing, post-processing, research and captioning, the
Yosemite National Park Portfolio has been expanded to 21 pages, displaying 750 images
detailing the Valley, Waterfalls, Rivers and Creeks, Rim Points, Wildlife and Plant Life.
There are also pages on Sequoia NP, Bodie Ghost Town, Mono Lake and Mariposa.

I have conducted numerous training sessions in Yosemite National Park over the years, and have several thousand images taken during these sessions and other visits. I have selected an extensive group of portfolio-grade scenic, wildlife and plant life images for the Yosemite section. Some of these images were in the previous Yosemite Valley section, and were carried over after being reprocessed. Other images are entirely new for this comprehensive rebuild. I have included separate pages with images from Mono Lake and Bodie Ghost Town (Mono Lake and Bodie are on the other side of Tioga Pass, off Highway 395), and from Mariposa (just south of Yosemite).

This page has Display Composites and a hyperlinked Index to the Yosemite Portfolio.

Click a link above or a display composite below to select a page.

Images in this section are in a number of different Galleries on the Photoshelter website.
The Banner below leads to the Yosemite Collection page where a Gallery can be selected.

There are 15 Galleries in the Photoshelter Yosemite Collection

For convenience, Galleries containing the images of Wildlife, Plants,
Sequoia National Park, Bodie Ghost Town, Mono Lake and Mariposa
have been copied to the Yosemite Collection from their normal locations.

The Yosemite Select page is a 75 image Overview of the Yosemite National Park Portfolio.
It shows one tenth of the Portfolio images to provide a comprehensive single page preview
of Yosemite Valley Views and Rock Features, Rivers, Creeks, Waterfalls, the Rim Points,
Wildlife and Plant Life. Bodie Ghost Town, Mono Lake and Mariposa are not displayed.

The Yosemite Valley section has four pages detailing scenery and rock features from some
of the most renowned locations in Yosemite National Park. The Valley Views page displays
images from Discovery View (Tunnel View) at the eastern portal of the Wawona Tunnel and
from the Gates of the Valley (Valley View), the iconic ground level view of Yosemite Valley.
The Mirror Lake page has scenes from the trail and Yosemite’s famous disappearing lake.
The Rivers and Creeks page shows scenic waterways (Merced River, Tenaya Creek, etc.).
The Yosemite Valley Assorted page details many famous rock features of Yosemite NP.

The Yosemite Valley Overview page has selected captioned
sample images and Display Composites linked to each page.

The Valley Views page displays images from Discovery View (also called Tunnel View) and
Gates of the Valley (also called Valley View). Discovery View is the first view of Yosemite Valley
seen by visitors who arrive from the south, as it is outside the eastern portal of the Wawona Tunnel.
Gates of the Valley is the quintessential ground-level view, looking down the valley from across
the Merced River. These two iconic scenes display the true grandeur of Yosemite Valley.

The Yosemite Valley Assorted page details many of the famous Rock Features in the Valley,
including Half Dome, El Capitan, Royal Arches, Cathedral Rocks, Sentinel Rock and more.
There are also images taken in the Tioga Pass, at the Ahwahnee Village, and shots of two
historic hotels, a historic locomotive, and several assorted scenic images from the valley.

Mirror Lake is the last remnant of a large glacial lake that once covered Yosemite Valley.
Located in Tenaya Canyon between Half Dome and North Dome, Mirror Lake is more of
a seasonal pond fed by Tenaya Creek, which is a rushing torrent in the spring, but dries
up by late summer. It is famous for the reflection of Mount Watkins in its placid waters.

The Merced River and its tributary creeks (Tenaya Creek, Yosemite Creek, Bridalveil Creek, etc.)
carry snowmelt down from the Sierra Nevada Mountains through Yosemite Valley over magnificent
 waterfalls for which Yosemite Valley is famous. The Rivers and Creeks page displays many of the
images taken during the spring flood stage from a number of scenic areas in the valley, including
several images taken at various exposure times to create different visual character in the water.

The waterfalls of Yosemite Valley are among the most spectacular in the world.
Iconic symbols of beauty, they thunder over towering cliffs well over 1000 feet tall
into the awe-inspiring grandeur of the most beautiful valley on Earth. This page
details several of the most impressive of these falls, including Bridalveil Fall,
Nevada Fall, Vernal Fall, Yosemite Falls and more, taken over six years.

Yosemite Falls is the signature waterfall in Yosemite NP and one of the tallest waterfalls in the world.
Yosemite Falls is composed of six separate drops in three sections: the Upper Fall is 1430 feet tall,
the Middle Cascades (three falls and a cascade) drops 675 feet, and the Lower Fall drops 320 feet.
Yosemite Falls, considered the most beautiful in the USA, is visible from many places in the Valley.

The Yosemite Rim section details three Overlooks on the Glacier Point Road:
Glacier Point and Washburn Point on one page, and Taft Point on its own page.
These three Points offer spectacular views of Yosemite Valley and the surrounding
area, including Little Yosemite Valley and the Western Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The Yosemite Rim Overview page has selected captioned
sample images and Display Composites linked to each page.

Glacier Point and Washburn Point offer panoramic views of Yosemite Valley and the
High Sierras. They are among the most popular destinations in Yosemite National Park
in the spring and summer, as they are accessible by car from the Glacier Point Road.
Washburn Point overlooks Half Dome in profile and has the best view of Nevada Fall,
Vernal Fall and the Little Yosemite Valley. The Glacier Point view of Yosemite Valley,
Half Dome and Tenaya Canyon from 3200 feet over the valley floor is breathtaking.

Taft Point is opposite the Three Brothers on the South Rim of Yosemite Valley,
at the end of a one mile trail through Red Fir forest from the Glacier Point Road.
Taft Point offers spectacular views from over 3000 feet above Yosemite Valley,
but it is best known for the Taft Point Fissures, enormous clefts in the rock with
an unprotected vertical drop of more than 1000 feet on the edge of Profile Cliff.

The Yosemite Wildlife section displays images of Mule Deer and several birds
taken in March, May and June, and a number of comical images and portraits
of Ground Squirrels, Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels, and a Yellow-Bellied
Marmot taken in March, May and October, split into two separate pages.

The Yosemite Wildlife Overview page has selected captioned
sample images and Display Composites linked to each page.

This page displays images of Mule Deer in the meadows of Yosemite Valley taken at
dawn, mid-day, sunset and dusk in March, May and June, and a Brewer’s Blackbird, several
Steller’s Jays, an Anna’s Hummingbird and a White-Headed Woodpecker taken in March and May.

The Rodent page has comical images and portraits of Ground Squirrels at Mirror Lake,
Glacier Point and Washburn Point, Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels from Taft Point, and a
Yellow-Bellied Marmot encountered at Olmsted Point above Tenaya Canyon on the Tioga Road.

The Yosemite Plant Life section has separate pages detailing the Giant Sequoias of
the Mariposa Grove, another page on the Giant Sequoias of the nearby Sequoia NP
and King’s Canyon National Park, and a page detailing assorted Yosemite Plant Life
which includes Forest Scenes, Moss and Lichen on the Taft Point, Mirror Lake and
Yosemite Falls Trails, Snow Plants, Lupines, Thistle, Dogwood and other plants.

The Yosemite Plant Life Overview page has selected captioned
sample images and Display Composites linked to each page.

The section includes a page on Giant Sequoias of Sequoia NP and King’s Canyon NP.

The Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias is the largest and most popular of Yosemite’s
three major Sequoia Groves. It contains several of the most famous Giant Sequoias,
including the Fallen Monarch (made famous by an 1899 photograph of the 6th Cavalry
posing with their horses on its massive trunk), the Grizzly Giant (the oldest and second
largest tree in the Mariposa Grove), and the California Tunnel Tree in the lower grove.

Sequoia National Park and King’s Canyon National Park are adjacent and contiguous parks
which were formed to protect the Giant Forest and General Grant Grove of Giant Sequoias in
the western Sierra Nevada mountains about three hours to the south of Yosemite National Park.
The General Sherman and General Grant Sequoias are two of the world’s largest trees by volume.

Forest scenes, Moss and Lichen on the Taft Point, Mirror Lake and Yosemite Falls Trails,
Brewer’s Lupines, Dogwood flowers and Bull Thistle on the Mirror Lake Trail, Lupines in the
Wawona Meadows, Snow Plants on the Wawona Road and more are displayed on this page.

50 images of Bodie Ghost Town in the Eastern Sierras north of Mono Lake.

A boom town from 1877-1880, by 1910 it had radically declined in population
from over 8,000 down to 700 people. By 1920 it had 110 people, and in 1943
only three people were left. Much of the town burned in 1932, and only a small part
remains, preserved in a state of “arrested decay” as a California State Historic Park.

Mono Lake is at the eastern end of the Tioga Pass, which crosses the Sierras from Yosemite Valley.
Ancestral home of the Yosemite-Mono Paiutes and Miwok, it is one of the oldest lakes in North America.
This page has 45 images of Mono Lake and the limestone Tufa Towers, which are travertine spires
and knobs formed by the interaction of freshwater springs and the alkaline waters of the lake.

Mariposa (Spanish for “Butterfly”) is a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills a few miles to
the southwest of Yosemite National Park. It was the southernmost of the foothill mining towns
during the 1849 Gold Rush, and in 1851 the Mariposa Battalion was formed there to stop the
native raids. The Mariposa Battalion was the first group of white men to enter Yosemite Valley.
Mariposa soon became a ranching and agricultural community, and it offers a nice place to stay
outside of Yosemite National Park, with easy access, reasonable costs and a bucolic environment.

Yosemite Valley XXXL

A 1600 x 984 version of the XXXL Composite (9994 x 6148) showing
El Capitan, Lower Tenaya Creek during Spring Flood, Half Dome at Sunset,
Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls, Yosemite Falls and Merced River, Bridalveil Fall.

Images in this section are in a number of different Galleries on the Photoshelter website.
The Banner below leads to the Yosemite Collection page where a Gallery can be selected.

There are 15 Galleries in the Photoshelter Yosemite Collection

For convenience, Galleries containing the images of Wildlife, Plants,
Sequoia National Park, Bodie Ghost Town, Mono Lake and Mariposa
have been copied to the Yosemite Collection from their normal locations.