Yosemite Photo Workshop

Sunday morning we met at the Mono Inn at 10am where we looked at pictures from the week from our fellow photographers. It was really enjoyable to see what other people had taken and there were some great pictures. We were both really happy with the pictures that we had taken. We wrapped up and said goodbye to everyone. It had been such a great bunch of people to spend the week with, we really hope we see some of them again sometime!  

We stopped at the Mobil Station for one last delicious meal where we had a final lunch with Will and Paul. Then it was off to Yosemite Valley. Even though the valley was only 23 miles from where we had lunch, to get there we had to go all the way to the West side of the park, so it was about a 2 hour drive. Driving through the park was great, though we definitely noticed the traffic picking up as we approached the valley and the "clueless driver level" increased as well. The temperature in the park was about 95°, compared to the 70-80 degree temperature we had experienced on the East side of the park. As we drove into the hotel we heard our funniest line from the navigation system: "In point two miles, turn right on hiking trail". (That turns out to be the name of the road, but it made us laugh!)

We checked in at the Ahwahnee which is an amazing hotel. It was built in 1927 and is right up there with the finest hotels in the world. Our room was wonderful, with windows looking out on the granite cliffs from two sides. We decided to do a loop of the valley in the car to snap a few pictures, then we spent time finalizing pictures in the room. At 7:00 we headed downstairs for dinner in the main dining room where we had a table at the window and delicious food.

We had breakfast in the main dining room at 8am, with a perfect table right by the window with a view of Upper Yosemite Falls. Afterwards we packed up and drove out of the valley. On the way back we passed Poots House of Cactus, which we of course had to stop at! Rick was very excited and got a few nice cactus specimens to bring home. It took us about 4 hours to get back, including a short stop for lunch. The temperatures along the way were kind of crazy; it was 110° in Livermore! Fortunately it was back in the low 90's when we arrived at home.

What a fun trip! We both had a great time and learned a lot. We'd highly recommend Michael's workshop to anyone interested in photographing Yosemite and improving their photography skills. He was very knowledgeable and is a great teacher. I think everyone in the class came away with new useful skills.

On this trip we both used Nikon D200 cameras with Nikon 18-200 VR lenses, 8GB Sandisk memory cards and polarizing filters. We had tripods along, though Randy only used his on the first day, and Rick didn't use his at all.

Randy had his 17" MacBook Pro and Rick had his 17" PowerBook G4. Both of us used Aperture for all of our photo processing, as well as for this website.

Our new Osprey backpacks were great, the internal frames kept the packs raised off of our backs so they were nice and cool, and the built-in camelback water containers kept us hydrated.