Yosemite: A photographic love story
Published 9:18 pm Wednesday, October 27, 2010
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — On a cold, rainy afternoon in October 2009, I stood under the canopy of a red-leafed sugar maple in Yosemite Valley and watched tiny drops of rain fall from a cluster of leaves.
My camera, equipped with a macro lens, was mounted on a tripod, and I held a cable release at the ready. For that hour, time stopped, and I was alone in a world of color and light.
My view of this natural marvel has been shaped by more than 50 years of visits, starting when I was a kid growing up in Southern California. We would make the long, winding drive toward Yosemite Valley and arrive at the entrance to the Wawona Tunnel. Framed by the jagged edges of the tunnel walls, the grand vista of Yosemite Valley unfolded like a giant painting.
Even as a child I knew this was a special place. The giant granite spires, monoliths and waterfalls. The clean air. The icy Merced River. The tourist-friendly deer by day, the trash-can-lid-clanking bears by night.
This photographic journey started with a vacation in the spring of 2009. The seasons unfurled during a dozen car trips north. I saw the leaves bud, then burst forth, smearing the sky with a vivid green. As the year progressed, they turned gold, then withered and dropped.
In fall Yosemite doesn’t generate the kind of buzz that other leaf-peeping spots enjoy. Yosemite has a more subtle but no less enthralling way of showing its change of seasons.
It’s a gradual transition. There is no single week in which all the colors change at once.
The showiest spots are scattered throughout the valley, a tree here, a field of ferns there.
By mid-October, the giant maple tree across from the chapel on Southside Drive turns from orange to bright red. The leaves of the dogwood and other trees around the Pohono Bridge become a sea of red and yellow.
In the middle of Cook’s Meadow, the giant elm, arguably the best known tree in the park, will turn yellow and orange. As autumn marches on and the air takes on a chill, the number of visitors begins to dwindle, and the leaves start to blanket the ground.
By November the colors begin to fade. Storms swing into the area, a few snowfalls occur and the transition into winter is under way.
More Yosemite photos
You can see a slide show of Mark Boster’s photographs of the four seasons at Yosemite at latimes.com/yosemite.
