Tips on how to take good pictures in Yosemite....

[John Kasaian]

...circa 1921!

http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/handbook_of_yosemite_national_park/photography.html

[Drew Wiley]

Just noticed this. I also linked to the fishing page. Interesting to see that they had no information on Edna Lake. It's so far off the beaten path that it's considered
one of the Park's prime fishing holes nowadays.

[Kevin Crisp]

Distant views require half as much exposure. I'll have to remember that....

[Heroique]

"In Nature there are no parallel lines so marked as to offend in a picture" – the trees in the N. Cascades that stand straight and tall want to hear more about their crooked cousins in Yosemite!

[Kevin Crisp]

Don't use any front rise and the offending parallel lines are gone.

[Drew Wiley]

The page with the driving advice is even better. I remember my dad steering with his knees downhill on the OLD Tioga Pass road, while loading his pipe, just to scare the passengers.

[Robert Langham]

Arthur Clarence Pillsbury has photo postcards on ebay right now. He did a lot of work in Yosemite.

135910

[Drew Wiley]

I see the dealer up town who specialized in 19thC Yos prints is still in business (barely). I knew he was getting up there in age. I passed by that corner this past
weekend. But he's consolidated his art gallery into his early Calif antique furniture shop, and is now open only one day a week by appt. Lots of old lithographs too.
He was an interesting fellow to chat with, and a bit of an expert on the various Uncle Earls who passed thru. Maybe Uncle Earl's granddaddy too. Love those old
albumens.

[paulr]

Look at enough existing pictures of Yosemite to get bored with them, so you won't feel any compulsion to repeat them.

[Drew Wiley]

I've taken maybe three or four shots in Yosemite Valley my entire life, even though I had a house nearby, and I am quite certain nobody ever did anything similar to what I've printed, or in one of those instances, ever got a view camera to the same spot (one has to be relatively insane to try it). I just prefer to photograph in the solitude of backcountry and avoid crowds. That can be done in Yosemite Valley off-season. Or just head somewhere else in the Park. If this weren't such a drought year I'd head for a stretch of the north boundary I'd still like to photograph, where the statistical odds of seeing anyone else are quite low. Same applies to the southeast quadrant of the Park, not to mention all the adjacent high country outside its boundaries. But I will admit a fondness for some of those old amateur or even routine commercial pre-AA shots. Sometimes amateur box camera screw-ups accidentally came out fascinating. One might have to sort through hundreds of prints to find a gem, but once you do it makes you reconsider your own visualization. Not that I'll be adding fungus to my lenses anytime soon, or following the advice in that little manual John linked us to, but still...

[John Kasaian]

IIRC at one time Kodak had snap shot signage at the classic Yosemite Valley scenic areas, just as in Disneyland and on Oahu. Best's must have sold a boatload of Kodak film in those days. I remember the weirdly fake stone patterned tar paper on the old store, errr....studioin the Village before the Village fell victim to the National Park manifestation of urban renewal. Thankfully us kids could still get the Dennis The Menace annual special summer vacation comic book(the thick one) and Borden's Ice Cream bars (as well as those salty Planter's Peanut Bars---especially after swimming in the pool---do they still make them?)
Yosemite Valley was my back yard for two weeks every summer from 1953 until the 1970s (my grandfather started going "up the hill" in 1925 and that is why he bought his first automobile in 1926, a Buick. We still have a 1926 Buick in the family, but the original was scrapped in a steel drive during WW2)
Good times. Good times.:)

[Drew Wiley]

Heck, where I grew up we literally called Yosemite "the city". I had to run about a mile barefoot either on a sizzling hot road or detour it over a hill covered with painful weeds and stickers. Then store had a tiny little refrigerator with some ice cream bars, frozen peas, and steak or two already half-melted by the time their store pickup got up the hill with their weekly grocery run. Then the trick was to eat your ice cream bar before it melted again, preferably under a shade tree. There was an open ice water bin for bottles (no cans) of Nesbit orange soda, Hires root beer, chocolate soda (remember that one?), 7-Up, and Coca Cola. Above that was a shelf of gallons of raunchy Gallo fortified wine. The only phone in town was a little mahogany box on the back wall, with the phone operator across the river in a different county. We didn't go to Yosemite to be outdoors. We went there to socialize. It was a hangout as far as we were concerned.