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Hiking Yosemite Falls

Posted May 21, 2024 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

There are several Yosemite hikes that stand out as something more than the typical nature trail. One of our family favorites is to hike the John Muir Trail up to Nevada Falls and then back down the Mist Trail to Vernal Falls. It’s a long day hike with plenty of rewarding views, and probably one of the most popular hikes from the valley. My most memorable Yosemite hike was climbing Halfdome back in 2011. We backpacked up past Nevada Falls to Little Yosemite Valley, where we camped the night. Then the following day we were up at 5am to hike the rest of the way to the summit and then all the way back down. It was a hike I’ll never forget.

Ever since making it to the top of Halfdome, I’ve wanted to hike to the top of Yosemite Falls. I’ve been to the park several times in the past 13 years, but I just haven’t had the chance to tackle that trail. A few weeks ago, in April 2024, I finally had the chance.

My parents were up to visit our house in Oakhurst for the week. The weather was iffy, but I determined that Wednesday would be the best day to do the hike: there was a small chance of rain, but not until the afternoon. High temperatures were supposed to be around 65° in the valley.

We woke up early that morning. Oakhurst is about an 1:30 drive from Yosemite Valley, and I wanted to get an early start. The sun rose at 6am, so we set the alarm for 3:30 in order to get there in time to watch it. I started the hike around 8am.

Upper Yosemite Falls from Swinging Bridge. Yosemite Point is the highest peak in the far upper right.

The plan was to hike 3.4 miles with 2,700 feet of elevation gain to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls. If I had the energy after getting to the top of the falls, I hoped to continue an extra 0.8 miles and up another 300 ft to Yosemite Point, which is the higher peak in the upper-right corner in the photo shown above. That would make 8.4 miles round-trip with an even 3,000 feet of elevation gain.

This being springtime, there were plenty of seasonal waterfalls draining across the trail. Here’s the first stream crossing I came to.

Most of the lower part of the trail was this a mix of sand and gravel. A little slick on the way up, but coming down it was much easier on the knees than the granite further up the trail.

The views on the way up were incredible.

The only drawback to hiking this time of year is that I was taking photos into the sun. You can see the Ahwanee hotel on the left side and the valley meadows pretty well in this one.

The weather was a big question mark still, so I brought lots of layers. I started the trail with a long sleeve shirt and a jacket on, as it was still in the lower 50s. The jacket came off within the first 20 minutes though, as the trail had countless stairs and switchbacks. By the time I was about halfway up, it felt like it was in the 60s and I changed into a short sleeve shirt. Continuing upward though it dropped back into the 50s and I was happy to have the jacket on again.

The second stream crossing was a little more involved. The trail here was only a few feet wide, and there was a pretty significant drop-off to the right.

For the first mile or two of the trail, you can’t see the falls. Then you round the corner at “Oh My Gosh Point” hear the roar of water falling 1500 feet, and see this…

I was thrilled to see the falls closer than ever before, but I also realized how much elevation I still had to climb.

The gully carved out by the river below the Upper Falls was really deep.

It was at this point that I got to take one of my bucket shots. I’ve always wanted to take a photo of a small horizontal band of water out of a larger waterfall. Yosemite Falls is perfect for this. I didn’t quite have the reach on my 24-105mm lens, but I was able to get this 15 megapixel crop from my camera’s original 45 megapixel image.

After Oh My Gosh Point, the trail started becoming much steeper and there was a lot more water on the trail. There would be entire switchbacks that would be streams. I was glad to have good hiking boots to get past this part of the trail without getting my socks wet.

Did I mention it was steep?

About 2/3rds the way up the trail, I saw a bear. It was maybe 100-200 yards away, and moving away from the trail. I stopped for about 10 minutes just to watch.

As I got close to the top of Yosemite Falls, there started to be a good amount of snow on the trail. At this point, it was still pretty easily to figure out where to go. That wouldn’t be the case later on…

I finally reached the top! A lot of folks were resting here, and I stopped to eat some lunch.

After hiking all the way up, you have to hike down a little bit to get to where the water drops off the edge. There was one section of trail that was a sheer drop on one side, and hardly a foot wide to stand on. There was only an old railing to hold onto. I was ready to turn around, but was determined that I didn’t come all the way to not make it the last 50 feet of the trail.

I was rewarded with an amazing view from the top of the falls. I made it!

Here’s a video I took from the top…

Now I had to make a decision of whether to go on to Yosemite Point. I was exhausted at this stage, and part of me thought not going to the point would be a good excuse to do the hike again someday. Ultimately I decided that if it had taken me over 10 years to do this hike once, it would take a lot longer to find a chance to hike it again. I crossed the bridge and continued to Yosemite Point.

The bridge that crosses the river at the top of Yosemite Falls.

On the bridge, looking downstream. The falls are just past the edge there.

Up past Yosemite Falls there was a lot more snow on the trail. Some sections my foot would sink in 1-2 feet, and other spots weren’t marked which made it difficult to follow the trail. I had to be careful. It made the last 0.8 miles a lot slower going.

About 45 minutes later I made it to Yosemite Point…

Looking down toward the valley meadows. I remember being chilly at the top and thinking how warm it looked in the valley.

The Halfdome cables weren’t up at this point. There was still a good amount of snow at higher elevations.

Looking from Yosemite Point back down toward Yosemite Falls. If you could see the falls, they would be just above the rock jutting up in the center of the frame. That rock had ropes on it for climbers. In the distance, you can see the steep switchbacks I hiked up earlier.

On the way back down, some rain was moving in. The view of Halfdome was quite incredible with the layer of clouds.

That picture of Halfdome was my last shot of the day. Coming back down was easier on my lungs, but harder on just about every other part of my body. I started the day with 2 liters of water and a 20 oz Gatorade. I drank the Gatorade and about 3/4ths of the water by the time the day was done. I imagine if I was doing the hike in the summer, I would have gone through a lot more water. It might have been better to carry a water filter and start with less water to save on weight at that point.

Overall, it was an amazing hike–one I’m sure I’ll never forget. Now I just need to figure out which Yosemite hike to do next…

Washington D.C.

Posted June 12, 2018 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

Here are my photos taken in Washington D.C. in the spring of 2018. Click any thumbnail to open into a full size slide show.

DC 1/ A few weeks ago, we took a trip to Washington D.C. The first morning we went out to see the monuments. The Lincoln Memorial was first, but when we got there, I turned to see the Washington Monument rising into the fog. I almost waited until after visiting the Lincoln Memorial before taking a picture of this, but if I’ve learned anything over the years of landscape photography, I know that when the sky conditions are right you don’t wait. I pulled my camera out of my backpack, and just when I was about to take a picture cropping out people in the foreground, I see these 4 women checking out the same view I was appreciating. I recomposed to include them in the frame and snapped this photo. Oh, and when we finished with our visit to the Lincoln Memorial, the fog had lifted and this view was gone…

DC 2/ The Lincoln Memorial is my favorite stop in D.C., probably because Lincoln is one of my favorite presidents. He stood for something that he believed in, but was able to be diplomatic when interacting with others who didn’t agree with him. Many people will take the head-on shot of Lincoln when visiting the Memorial, but there were a lot of other good angles that I enjoyed exploring. I had a few good ones showing a side profile, but I liked this quarter view better because you could see more of his face, while also including the columns that are such a big part of the landmark.

DC 3/ Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech is one of the more notable events that has happened outside the Lincoln Memorial. While Dr. King has his own memorial nearby, he is remembered here with this engraving on the stone floor.

DC 4/ One last shot of the Lincoln Memorial. This one was taken a few days later, on a weekend day when it is much more crowded. Even though the original had a nice blue sky, I decided to process this one in black and white because I liked the extra contrast of the bright monument to its surroundings.

DC 5/ Sometimes a rainy mess of a day can still present you with plenty of good photo opportunities. Here at the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the rain just added to the tone of the memorial.

DC 6/ The FDR Memorial was fantastic. It was broken up into multiple sections, each one focusing on a different theme of his presidency. This shot shows the area representing his New Deal.

DC 7/ Another area of the FDR Memorial represented his time as president during WW II. What I found interesting is that this area felt so peaceful while we were there.

DC 8/ The Jefferson Memorial is off the beaten path a bit. However it’s a favorite of many. I actually had to return a second time to grab this shot. The first day we were walking along the Tidal Basin and I saw this photo, but didn’t have my telephoto lens. A few days later I brought my 100-400 out with me and returned to this spot to capture the image above. It was almost overcast, but there were a few spots of blue sky. I waited about 10 minutes for the sky to shed some sunlight onto the monument.

DC 9/ Arlington National Cemetery is a powerful place to visit. The sheer enormity of it can be overwhelming. JFK is buried there, as well as President Taft, among hundreds of thousands of others.

DC 10/ Ford’s Theater. We spent several hours touring the place where Lincoln was shot. It’s interesting to note that the theater is actually a recreation of the original site. The original theater didn’t survive financially after the event that makes it famous, so the building became several other things through the years before the National Park Service decided to use photos to restore it to its original state. The presidential booth is decorated with a picture of Washington, which I found to be strange. It’s my understanding that the picture of Washington originally marked it as the presidential booth (the White House is about a half mile away), so they kept it the way it was.

DC 11/ Good artists copy; great artists steal. This quote kept coming to mind as I captured this photo of the National Museum of African American History and Culture with the Washington Monument in the background. The hotel we were staying at had a travel magazine with a similar shot on the cover, and I decided I had to try and recreate it on my own. I figured out the best location to photograph it from, then decided the best time to photograph it would be in the morning while the sun was in the right position. I’m happy with the result. We would have loved to have visited the museum itself, but we couldn’t get tickets. Every day at 6:30am they offer a certain number of tickets on their website. We woke up early to pick up a couple of them, but they were gone within minutes. Next time…

DC 12/ One of my favorite buildings in the DC area is the Supreme Court building. It was just so pristine with marble everywhere, and the masonry was fantastic. We toured inside the next day, but the afternoon I took this photo was after it had already closed to visitors.

DC 13/ Nine chairs for the folks who keep Congress in check. I took this photo from just outside the courtroom looking in. I was happy to get the shot, but it was unfortunate that cameras weren’t allowed inside the courtroom itself. The ceiling was adorned with several statues and decorations around the room, and it would have been great to capture it as well.

DC 14/ The spiral staircase in the Supreme Court building. I’m a sucker for repetition in photos, so when I saw this spiral staircase, I had to grab a shot. The stonework was beautiful.

DC 15/ Right next door to the Supreme Court building is the Capitol. This photo was taken in the Statuary Hall. Just outside the frame are several statues that are commissioned by different states. The statues were great, but with hundreds of people touring the room at the same time, I decided to focus on capturing the ceiling instead.

DC 16/ Inside the main Capitol dome. I was thankful to have my 16-35 while visiting, because there’s just no way to capture the expanse of this room otherwise. There were paintings on the ceiling, as shown here, but there were also paintings on all the walls as well. It almost reminded me of a room of creative works at a museum like the Louvre.

DC 17/ When packing for a trip like this, I almost never bring a long telephoto lens. Most of the time I prefer to travel light and use either a 16-35 or a 24-105. However, I had one shot in my mind before leaving, and that is the shot shown above. I wanted a shot during the blue hour right after sunset, showing the detail of the Capitol dome from a long distance. I thought about bringing the 70-200, but wasn’t sure 200mm would be long enough. I tossed the 100-400 in my bag instead, and I’m glad I did because I’m out closer to 400mm in this capture. I did save a little bit of weight, packing a monopod instead of a tripod, and relying on image stabilization in the lens and the high ISO capability of the 5D Mark IV. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I’m thinking about printing it (along with a few other images from the trip).

DC 18/ Usually long exposure captures need to be planned to make sure you have a tripod, the right vantage point, etc. this one wasn’t planned at all. I was out on an evening walk with my wife and came across this overpass. We stopped for only a minute to grab this photo, using the railing as a tripod.

DC 19/ The inside of the Library of Congress was nothing short of spectacular. Even though there were tons of tourists wandering the halls, the place was big enough to capture photos without any distractions. I was fortunate to have the 16-35 with me that day to capture some ultra-wides like the shot above.

DC 20/ We were wandering the halls of the Library of Congress, and we ended up down a hallway that we later found out was staff-only. It was definitely a quieter part of the building, and this would have been a perfect spot to sit and rest for awhile after being immersed in the hustle-and-bustle of the rest of D.C.

DC 21/ The Library of Congress Reading Room. I was just awestruck by this view; the room was fantastic. This photo was taken through glass on an observation deck, but fortunately you’d never know it from seeing the resulting image. This is just about the entire frame of the 30 megapixel image from my 5D Mark IV. I’m planning to make a big print of this one to really be able to appreciate all the detail captured.

DC 22/ The final stop I made on the trip to D.C. was to the National Cathedral the morning before leaving. I had read the architecture was similar to Notre Dame in Paris. Even though the cathedral was built within the last 100 years, it was designed in a gothic style similar to many cathedrals in Europe.

DC 23/ The baptismal font in the National Cathedral. While the venue attempts to host a wide variety of Christian denominations (and doesn’t restrict anyone who asks to use it), the church is actually Episcopal.

DC 24/ While at the National Cathedral, I was fortunate to catch a demonstration of the organ. The organ is pretty amazing in it’s own right, consisting of more than 10,000 pipes. Here’s a shot of the musician’s console.

DC 25/ The basement of the National Cathedral is split up into several chapels such as this one. Each one was decorated differently. Also of note in this photo are the massive pillars on either side of the image. I’m not talking about the smaller pillars about the third of the way in to each side of the photo. Instead notice how these “small” pillars are each part of a larger circular pillar that makes up a corner of the room. The Cathedral is so tall, that by the time the pillars get to the basement level, they are about 40 ft in diameter.

DC 26/ Just before leaving the National Cathedral (and returning home to Michigan), I wandered into this chapel in the basement. The entire chapel was decorated with the most amazing tile mosaics. This one was my favorite. Thanks for following me on my D.C. adventure!

Upstate New York 2015

Posted April 22, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

Last summer, we spent a week in Upstate New York. Here were some shots I took while we were there.

The gorge at Letchworth State Park is beautiful.

While visiting Letchworth State Park, we came across this beaver grooming himself in the river.

Here’s a shot of the Upper Falls at Letchworth State Park. You can just catch the bottom of the train tracks crossing the river upstream at the top of this photo.

You can’t visit the Buffalo area without a trip to Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is too big to really capture in a single photo. I would recommend something like a 50mm lens and move around to really capture the area. Here’s a detail shot of the Horseshoe Falls.

By taking one of the tours like the Maid of the Mist or the Hornblower, you can get a whole different view of the falls. There’s a risk of getting your camera gear wet, so I had a cover for my camera bag and tucked the whole bag under the poncho they gave us once we started getting closer to the Canadian Falls.

We were on the Hornblower boat tour. Tours were running so often, that I was able to grab this photo of the Maid of the Mist (which leaves from the American side).

Even though there is a lot of lush green foliage at the base of the falls, this photo was really asking to be processed in black and white. I used Nik Silver Efex Pro 2. Though I’ve visited Niagara countless times, this shot is one of my favorites. This is another example of not always using a wide angle lens at Niagara Falls. This was shot at 85mm and even cropped a little bit.

Pismo Beach

Posted April 3, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

While visiting family out in California for the holidays, we went to Pismo Beach for a day. It was a hazy day, so it wasn’t the best environment for catching some clear surfing shots, but that didn’t mean there weren’t some good photo opportunities to be had. Check out the album below.

A shot looking south from the pier. The hazy atmosphere resulted in some interesting light.

A surfer on the north side of the pier in the pit. The feeling of getting barreled is like nothing else. Usually Pismo waves break pretty flat, but this day had some great little barrels.

This was taken up on the pier. While seagulls are common along the shore (and even here in Michigan), this guy was particularly sharp. Couldn’t resist grabbing a shot of him.

There were a ton of baby sea gulls running around. They weren’t easy to photograph, since they were moving around so quickly. I liked the reflection of this one in the sand.

Who invited the bi-plane into the line-up? Looks like a nice little set coming in down below.

This was taken from the beach with my 100-400. Nice little cutback off the lip.

A surfer heading in. While walking along the beach I saw this potential shot (when the surfer wasn’t there). I had to wait for awhile before someone passed by to complete the composition.

Snocross

Posted March 23, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

A few weeks ago, I went to a Snocross event here in Mt. Pleasant. While I wasn’t able to cover the entire track, I did find a few good spots to capture images from. Most of the time I was able to keep my shutter speed up above 1/1000 of a second to freeze the fast action.

During the first hour of the event, I was over-using the 10 fps high speed shutter in the camera I was using. I was capturing RAW to a 32GB CF card, and JPEG to a 32GB SDXC card. In that first hour I ran through about half of my 32GB memory card. With my other memory cards at home, I had to re-think my approach and make a few changes.

First, I decided that I didn’t need backups of every photo, so I stopped recording JPEG to the SDXC card. Now the camera would instead capture everything in RAW and automatically switch to the SD card when the CF was full.

Second, I realized that even though snocross is fast action, I didn’t need a full 10 fps like other sports where tiny changes in position really count. So I set my low-speed continuous shooting to 6 fps.

The last change I made was in my technique. As the day moved on, I learned to be more judicious about when the best action was happening, and only held down the shutter at those more intense moments. Bursts of 20 photos with a lot of throw-away images turned into bursts of about 4-5 photos at the peak of action. That was about as few photos as I was willing to take, because the first couple photos would usually be waiting for the lens focusing to lock on to the fast-moving subjects. (For focus settings on the 7D Mark II, I used focus case 1 at the beginning of the day, and then switched to focus case 6 later which I felt helped improve the focus speed.)

By the end of the day I ended up with a full CF card and about 50% of my SD card full, so I had plenty of room. Next time I’ll not only have this experience to build off of, but I’ll make sure I don’t forget my extra cards at home for a full day sports event.

Hope you enjoy the gallery. Next up on my Instagram will be some photos I took in December at Pismo Beach.

Jake Geeseman nailing a jump.

The snowcats took good care of the track in-between heats.

Justin Gaudet rockin it

Corin Todd taking off.

Jake Angove putting the hammer down.

Zach Pattyn checks the field

Kevin Wallenstein haulin ass down the hill. This hill was pretty far from where I was standing, so I was at the longer end of my lens for this one. I had a view of the racers for a couple of seconds before they were off down the back straight.

Ian Buchman catching some air around turn 1.

Jeff Jasan starting another lap.

About 10 seconds after the start of a race everyone hits the first jump. I tried to capture the chaos here.

Brady Love riding the lip.

Jake Scott going horizontal.

Korbyn Anderson getting some nice hang time. It was starting to get dark, so I switched from the 100-400mm to my faster 85mm f1.8. I kept the lens wide open and set my ISO to 1600 (and later 2000) to keep the shutter speed around 1/1000 of a second.

Adam Renheim and Zach Pattyn racing neck and neck.

Mike George hitting the first jump in a triple along the back stretch. At 85mm, I had a fast enough lens, but not quite the reach of the 100-400. I still really liked how the powder was lit here.

Mike George celebrating

Snocross silhouette

New Orleans 2016

Posted March 1, 2016 by Mike Piatek-Jimenez

In January, I went to the American Meteorological Society’s Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The conference is just under a week long, so I had plenty of time to see the sights and get out in the evenings for some photography. It was my second time in New Orleans, so I had an idea of places I wanted to visit and things I wanted to do.

New Orleans is unlike any other city in the United States. It has an exceedingly rich culture, a beautiful variety of architecture, and fantastic night life. You can spend days exploring the French Quarter alone.

Here are the photos I took while on the trip.

There are a million things to photograph in New Orleans, if you have the Desire.

New Orleans has style, inside and out. There is no shortage of bars on Bourbon Street. I liked the architecture of this bar’s exterior in particular.

The old-school architecture in the French Quarter never gets old. The 85mm lens is a perfect focal length for this type of street photography. I hung out across the street for about 10 minutes photographing people walking by this door. I was able to get the shot without my presence altering the behavior of people in the image.

Came across this scene behind the St. Louis Cathedral. Intentional or not, it was pretty cool.

Practicing my “walking by” photos.

I took this photo through a grated metal door, yet you can’t even tell (thank you depth-of-field). Loved the look of this hallway.

I took this shot while snacking on some beignets at Cafe du Monde. Tip: be diligent while wiping the beignet powdered sugar off your hands before picking up your camera.

The countless art galleries in New Orleans are a big draw. Exploring them is a great way to spend a day.

Art isn’t for everyone. Sometimes you’re just trying to get home.

Walking in the French Quarterâ€¦

Music, of course, is a big draw of New Orleans. You couldn’t walk a block in the French Quarter at night without coming across a live band.

Playing in a courtyard of a cafe on Bourbon Street.

These guys were great performers. So much fun to listen to.

Not a train. Not a trolly. This is a streetcar.

A pink Cadillac I came across while walking the French Quarter in New Orleans.

Something about the man in the window of this book store caught my eye.